Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Marius Schneider @mariusschneider.bsky.social · 9d

On a Thursday your best bet is probably Silbergold or Pracht

2 1

Marius Schneider @mariusschneider.bsky.social · 15d

Congrats!! & welcome to one of the best cities ;)

1 3

Reposted by Marius Schneider

Dan Levenstein @dlevenstein.bsky.social · 15d

Bet: this flavor of same-stimulus, same-task, compare-behavior, compare-physiology is the future of model testing and theory development in neuroscience.

Marius Schneider @mariusschneider.bsky.social · 15d

🚨Our NeurIPS 2025 competition Mouse vs. AI is LIVE!

We combine a visual navigation task + large-scale mouse neural data to test what makes visual RL agents robust and brain-like.

Top teams: featured at NeurIPS + co-author our summary paper. Join the challenge!

Whitepaper: arxiv.org/abs/2509.14446

Mouse vs. AI: A Neuroethological Benchmark for Visual Robustness and Neural Alignment

Visual robustness under real-world conditions remains a critical bottleneck for modern reinforcement learning agents. In contrast, biological systems such as mice show remarkable resilience to environ...

arxiv.org

3 4 16

Marius Schneider @mariusschneider.bsky.social · 15d

Thanks to the whole team behind Mouse vs AI:
@jingpeng.bsky.social , Yuchen Hou, Joe Canzano, @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social & @mbeyeler.bsky.social !

A special shout-out to Joe, who designed the Unity task, trained the mice, and recorded the neural data — making this benchmark possible!

4

Marius Schneider @mariusschneider.bsky.social · 15d

Submit your model. Compete against mice.
Which model architectures solve the task, and which find brain-like solutions?
Let us uncover what it takes to build robust, biologically inspired agents!
Read the whitepaper: arxiv.org/abs/2509.14446
Explore the challenge: robustforaging.github.io

1 4

Marius Schneider @mariusschneider.bsky.social · 15d

🧠 Track 2: Neural Alignment

Do task-trained agents develop brain-like internal representations?

We regress model activations onto 19k+ neurons across all mouse visual areas recorded during the same task.

This lets us test whether brain-like codes emerge naturally from behavior-driven learning.

Participants submit models trained only on robust foraging.
We then regress from their model activations onto SOTA mesoscale population scale recordings including all mouse visual areas at once.
This let us test whether brain-like codes emerge naturally from behavior-driven learning

1 2

Marius Schneider @mariusschneider.bsky.social · 15d

🧭Track 1: Visual Robustness

Track 1 evaluates how well RL agents generalize to unseen visual perturbations, like different weather or lighting changes, while performing a foraging task.

Mice perform the same task in VR—enabling direct behavioral comparisons across species.

Track 1 tests generalization to unseen visual perturbations and ranks models based on how well they generalize (perform under these unseen perturbations)

1 2

Marius Schneider @mariusschneider.bsky.social · 15d

We built a naturalistic Unity world (not blocky or toy-like) and trained mice to perform a foraging task in it.

Now it’s your turn: train RL agents on the same task and submit your model!

train mouse and AI on shared foraging task

1 3

Marius Schneider @mariusschneider.bsky.social · 15d

🚨Our NeurIPS 2025 competition Mouse vs. AI is LIVE!

We combine a visual navigation task + large-scale mouse neural data to test what makes visual RL agents robust and brain-like.

Top teams: featured at NeurIPS + co-author our summary paper. Join the challenge!

Whitepaper: arxiv.org/abs/2509.14446

Mouse vs. AI: A Neuroethological Benchmark for Visual Robustness and Neural Alignment

Visual robustness under real-world conditions remains a critical bottleneck for modern reinforcement learning agents. In contrast, biological systems such as mice show remarkable resilience to environ...

arxiv.org

3 20 37

Reposted by Marius Schneider

Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · Jul 10

Can your AI beat a mouse?

Mice still outperform our best computing machines in some ways. One way is robust visual processing.

10 years ago I decided to work on HARD behavior driven by COMPLEX visual processing. And that risk is paying off now. #neuroAI 1/n

An illustration of a mouse on a ball looking at a field of grass displayed on monitors.

1 16 45

Reposted by Marius Schneider

Tim Vogels @tpvogels.bsky.social · Jun 30

Here is your last reminder that the application deadline for Imbizo.Africa is nearing quickly, the 1st of July, in fact tomorrow. Still the place where diversity is at its best in the world! Tell all who need to hear. #africa #neuro

#Imbizo - Simons Computational Neuroscience Imbizo - #Imbizo

Simons Computational Neuroscience Imbizo summer school in Cape Town, South Africa

Imbizo.Africa

17 20

Reposted by Marius Schneider

Zero-Noise Lab @zeronoiselab.bsky.social · Jun 10

Now out in @natcomms.nature.com‬: Mice and monkeys spontaneously shift through comparable cognitive states - and it's written all over their faces! (1/7)
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Inferring internal states across mice and monkeys using facial features - Nature Communications

Here, the authors created a virtual reality task for monkeys and mice to explore if internal states like attention are similar across species. Their facial expressions during the task were similar, su...

www.nature.com

1 23 73

Reposted by Marius Schneider

Paul Fairie @paulisci.bsky.social · May 27

A Brief History of Young People Today Don't Want to Work

🧵

50 570 1.4K

Marius Schneider @mariusschneider.bsky.social · May 9

Highly recommended for all neuroscientists who want to learn more about computational neuroscience in a supportive community!

Lisa Schmors @lisaschmors.bsky.social · May 8

🧠🤖 Computational Neuroscience summer school IMBIZO in Cape Town is open for applications again!

💻🧬 3 weeks of intense coursework & projects with support from expert tutors and faculty

📈Apply until July 1st!

🔗https://imbizo.africa/

1 2

Reposted by Marius Schneider

Shervin Safavi @neuroprinciplist.bsky.social · Feb 20

Re-posting is appreciated: We have a fully funded PhD position in CMC lab @cmc-lab.bsky.social (at @tudresden_de). You can use forms.gle/qiAv5NZ871kv... to send your application and find more information. Deadline is April 30. Find more about CMC lab: cmclab.org and email me if you have questions.

forms.gle

3 89 77

Reposted by Marius Schneider

Mashbayar Tugsbayar @tmshbr.bsky.social · Apr 15

Top-down feedback is ubiquitous in the brain and computationally distinct, but rarely modeled in deep neural networks. What happens when a DNN has biologically-inspired top-down feedback? 🧠📈

Our new paper explores this: elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Top-down feedback matters: Functional impact of brainlike connectivity motifs on audiovisual integration

elifesciences.org

3 34 110

Reposted by Marius Schneider

Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social · Apr 12

410 4.1K 15K

Reposted by Marius Schneider

The Viking (Gunnar Blohm) @gunnarblohm.bsky.social · Apr 10

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Foundation model of neural activity predicts response to new stimulus types - Nature

A foundation model trained on neural activity of visual cortex from multiple mice accurately predicts responses to video stimuli and cell types, dendritic features and connectivity within the MICrONS ...

www.nature.com

1 14 35

Reposted by Marius Schneider

Martin Vinck @martinavinck.bsky.social · Apr 10

Firing rates in visual cortex show representational drift, while temporal spike sequences remain stable

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Great work by Boris Sotomayor and with @battaglialab.bsky.social

Firing rates in visual cortex show representational drift, while temporal spike sequences remain stable

Neural firing-rate responses to sensory stimuli show progressive changes both within and across sessions, raising the question of how the brain mainta…

www.sciencedirect.com

20 70

Reposted by Marius Schneider

Nina Kudryashova @ninelk.bsky.social · Apr 7

Excited to share our new pre-print on bioRxiv, in which we reveal that feedback-driven motor corrections are encoded in small, previously missed neural signals.

1 16 25

Marius Schneider @mariusschneider.bsky.social · Mar 27

Excited for the poster session at #Cosyne tonight!
Come check out the two posters I am involved in—one on neural representations and generalization in mice & RL agents trained on the same foraging task, and another on selective attention in spiking networks.

2

Reposted by Marius Schneider

Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · Mar 24

Coming to the #Cosyne2025 workshops? Wanna dance on the final night? We got you covered.

@glajoie.bsky.social and I have organized a party in Tremblant. Come and get on the dance floor y'all. 🕺

April 1st
10PM-3AM
Location: Le P'tit Caribou

DJs Mat Moebius, Xanarelle, and Prosocial

Please share!

Party poster for dance party on final night of Cosyne 2025 workshops. It will take place April 1st, 2025, 10PM to 3AM at Le P'tit Caribou.

2 10 43

Reposted by Marius Schneider

Amr Farahat @amr-farahat.bsky.social · Mar 13

🧵 time!
1/15
Why are CNNs so good at predicting neural responses in the primate visual system? Is it their design (architecture) or learning (training)? And does this change along the visual hierarchy?
🧠🤖
🧠📈

https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.106794.v3

3 7 34

Reposted by Marius Schneider

Masud Husain @masudhusain.bsky.social · Mar 6

Why academia is sleepwalking into self-destruction. My editorial @brain1878.bsky.social If you agree with the sentiments please repost. It's important for all our sakes to stop the madness
academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

51 310 540

Reposted by Marius Schneider

Martin Vinck @martinavinck.bsky.social · Mar 6

Happy to see this study led by Irene Onorato finally out - we show distinct phase locking and spike timing of optotagged PV cells and Sst interneuron subtypes during gamma oscillations in mouse visual cortex, suggesting an update to the classic PING model www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Distinct roles of PV and Sst interneurons in visually induced gamma oscillations

Gamma-frequency oscillations are a hallmark of active information processing and are generated by interactions between excitatory and inhibitory neuro…

www.sciencedirect.com

1 13 35