Andrew MacAskill
@macaskillaf.bsky.social
2.2K followers 2K following 120 posts
UCL neuroscientist investigating the neural basis of contextual decision making. Views are my own. Prof @uclnpp lab website: www.macaskilllab.com UCL profile: https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/5194 also @[email protected]
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
Reposted by Andrew MacAskill
simongosden.bsky.social
Today is the 89th anniversary of The Battle of Cable Street when the people of the East End of London halted the march of Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts through Stepney.
Reposted by Andrew MacAskill
Reposted by Andrew MacAskill
currentbiology.bsky.social
True. Current Biology on the other hand...
macaskillaf.bsky.social
Doubling up a few others - UK you don't need a masters, but it's very competitive (at UCL it's about 1-5%) so either proper lab experience or a masters is really helpful. My advice would be to reach out to pis that you are interested in working for and ask for advice about programs and requirements!
Reposted by Andrew MacAskill
ilanawitten.bsky.social
We're looking for a research assistant to work in our neuroscience lab at @princetonneuro.bsky.social @hhmi.org where we study learning and decision-making circuitry.

Apply here: research-princeton.icims.com/jobs/21001/r...

Pls share w/ anyone who might be interested!
Reposted by Andrew MacAskill
magnuslovold.bsky.social
The story — written by journalist @emmaanne.bsky.social — raises tough questions about the perverse incentives at play in mine action.

Emma reached out @thehalotrust.bsky.social for comment. They declined.

Read the full story: spoileralerts.substack.com/p/questionab...
Questionable incentives
Why is the CEO of the world’s largest demining organisation defending banned landmines?
spoileralerts.substack.com
macaskillaf.bsky.social
Similar to posts before - doing this in a 'many lines of evidence' approach too is probably ideal - no one golden expt. Just a series of thought out experiments designed to test the limits of a theory, each adding weight to the next.

saying this out loud makes me feel old...
macaskillaf.bsky.social
Was thinking of a way to say something similar as eloquently as this! I think it needs travel in both directions - actively trying to find testable hypotheses that support (and don't support) a theory is key
macaskillaf.bsky.social
Yep we use this one - there was another but it got bought by millipore and discontinued.... Zzz
macaskillaf.bsky.social
its almost as if we live near each other isnt it 😅
macaskillaf.bsky.social
Depending on what your 'standard' is - Columbia rd flower market followed by hackney city farm is always a nice Sunday time!
macaskillaf.bsky.social
apply! its a fantastic, collaborative and energetic department investigating physiology and neuroscience across scales - based in beautiful UCL in London
a picture of UCL in the sunshine (which is always as it never rains in London)
macaskillaf.bsky.social
Obviously expertise in research areas that fall within our strategic priorities of engineering biology and artificial intelligence are also particularly encouraged
macaskillaf.bsky.social
Expertise at the cellular and molecular levels are particularly encouraged. We are interested in applications from outstanding researchers in modalities such as targeted protein degraders, protein-protein interaction disruptors, therapeutic antibodies, or de novo protein design.
Reposted by Andrew MacAskill
laklab.bsky.social
Our work, out at Cell, shows that the brain’s dopamine signals teach each individual a unique learning trajectory. Collaborative experiment-theory effort, led by Sam Liebana in the lab. The first experiment my lab started just shy of 6y ago & v excited to see it out: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
Reposted by Andrew MacAskill
jessegeerts.bsky.social
This is a nice paper which applies and refines some of the ideas we put forward in our Psych Review paper. Our model combined multiple Successor Representations which it switches between based on uncertainty. Jess's model adds reward outcomes to this process and captures splitter cells and more!
macaskillaf.bsky.social
Congrats to the fantastic Jess P for her new paper! She compared how feature Vs outcome focussed agents learn to solve contextual inference problems. She found that you need a balance of both to learn these tasks - and that this mix recapitulates pfc and hippocampal activity in rodent tasks!
biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social
Contextual inference through flexible integration of environmental features and behavioural outcomes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.28.656607v1
Reposted by Andrew MacAskill
saxelab.bsky.social
How does in-context learning emerge in attention models during gradient descent training?

Sharing our new Spotlight paper @icmlconf.bsky.social: Training Dynamics of In-Context Learning in Linear Attention
arxiv.org/abs/2501.16265

Led by Yedi Zhang with @aaditya6284.bsky.social and Peter Latham
macaskillaf.bsky.social
Really interesting stuff here!! Looking forward to digging in
Reposted by Andrew MacAskill
Reposted by Andrew MacAskill
drdanbrierley.bsky.social
Finishing your undergraduate and interested in neuroscience research?

The Neuroscience streams of our Biosciences MRes degree provide a unique opportunity to conduct a year-long research project in any UCL neuro lab, plus taught modules to prepare you for a PhD.

🧪🧠📈

www.ucl.ac.uk/biosciences/...
ucllifesciences.bsky.social
Want to find out more about the neuroscience stream of UCL's Biosciences MRes? Register for our online open event on Friday 13 June, 11am-12pm: app.geckoform.com/events-embed...