Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Floris de Lange

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · Sep 8

Last week, the International Brain Laboratory released a comprehensive activity map of the rodent brain during decision-making, enabling researchers to "test new ideas in a really easy and powerful way," says neuroscientist @predictivebrain.bsky.social.

By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social

bit.ly/4mhqMRO

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Nadine Dijkstra @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social · Sep 4

*Absolutely* beautiful work characterizing the neural transformations between imagery and perception! 🤩

Matthias Nau @matthiasnau.bsky.social · Sep 4

A transformation from vision to imagery in the human brain. Intriguing new preprint by Roy & Naselaris et al for anyone interested in mental imagery!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A transformation from vision to imagery in the human brain

Extensive work has shown that the visual cortex is reactivated during mental imagery, and that models trained on visual data can predict imagery activity and decode imagined stimuli. These findings ma...

www.biorxiv.org

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International Brain Laboratory @intlbrainlab.bsky.social · Sep 3

Two flagship papers from the International Brain Laboratory, now out in ‪@Nature.com‬:
🧠 Brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour: doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09235-0
🧠 Brain-wide representations of prior information in mouse decision-making: doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09226-1 +

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Tim Kietzmann @timkietzmann.bsky.social · Aug 9

Hi, we will have three NeuroAI postdoc openings (3 years each, fully funded) to work with Sebastian Musslick (@musslick.bsky.social), Pascal Nieters and myself on task-switching, replay, and visual information routing.

Reach out if you are interested in any of the above, I'll be at CCN next week!

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Nadine Dijkstra @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social · Aug 8

🚨Amazing opportunity: position available for a new associate/full professor at the FIL @imagingneuroucl.bsky.social @uclbrainscience.bsky.social! Do you have a neuroimaging-focused research program? Get applying! 🚨

www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

UCL – University College London

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

www.ucl.ac.uk

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bachlab @bachlab.bsky.social · Aug 4

#bignews: @unibonn.bsky.social now has a Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience and it is already growing! Welcome to Bonn, Professor Floris de Lange @predictivebrain.bsky.social ! New #caian website and more updates will follow within the next few weeks.

www.caian.uni-bonn.de/en/news

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Raphaël Millière @raphaelmilliere.com · Jul 18

I wrote an entry on Transformers for the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (‪@oecs-bot.bsky.social‬). I had to work with a tight word limit, but I hope it's useful as a short introduction for students and researchers who don't work on machine learning:

oecs.mit.edu/pub/ppxhxe2b

Transformers

oecs.mit.edu

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Tübingen SNS 2025 @snstuebingen.bsky.social · Jul 8

🔵 Tübingen Systems Neuroscience Symposium 2025 is here! 🔵

#SNS2025 brings together leading international researchers in system neuroscience 🧠

Join us for plenary lectures, poster sessions and social events on 6️⃣-7️⃣ October 2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣5️⃣

registration is open here 👉 meg.medizin.uni-tuebingen.de/sns_2025/

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Vlad Ayzenberg @vayzenb.bsky.social · Jul 2

My paper with @stellalourenco.bsky.social ‬is now out in Science Advances!

We found that children have robust object recognition abilities that surpass many ANNs. Models only outperformed kids when their training far exceeded what a child could experience in their lifetime

doi.org/10.1126/scia...

Fast and robust visual object recognition in young children

The visual recognition abilities of preschool children rival those of state-of-the-art artificial intelligence models.

doi.org

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Marcelo Mattar @marcelomattar.bsky.social · Jul 2

Thrilled to see our TinyRNN paper in @nature! We show how tiny RNNs predict choices of individual subjects accurately while staying fully interpretable. This approach can transform how we model cognitive processes in both healthy and disordered decisions. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Discovering cognitive strategies with tiny recurrent neural networks - Nature

Modelling biological decision-making with tiny recurrent neural networks enables more accurate predictions of animal choices than classical cognitive models and offers insights into the underlying cog...

doi.org

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · Jul 2

🎈 Out now: 🎈

"The capacity limits of moving objects in the imagination"

(by Balaban & me)

of interest to people thinking about the imagination, intuitive physics, mental simulation, capacity limits, and more

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

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David Richter @davidrichter.bsky.social · Jun 26

The what and when of visual surprise:
EEG shows that high-level visual surprise emerges rapidly and modulates neural responses ~200ms after stimulus onset.

New preprint with @paulapena.bsky.social and @mruz.bsky.social available here: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Summary 🧵 below

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Nancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · Jun 28

When our protests are banned, may we have the courage of the Hungarians to march in ever greater numbers!

Republicans Against Trumpism @rpsagainsttrump.bsky.social · Jun 28

A government ban on Hungary’s Pride parade backfired Saturday as over 100,000 people marched through Budapest, far more than usual

PM Viktor Orban warned people to stay away, threatening “clear legal consequences.” But the warnings only turned a modest event into a mass rally against his government

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Rhodri Cusack @rhodricusack.bsky.social · Jun 25

Not just one, but two fantastic chances to discuss how infant development can inform machine learning and vice-versa at CCN 2025 in Amsterdam!!! Satellite workshop sites.google.com/view/child2m...
and Generative Adversarial Collaboration sites.google.com/ccneuro.org/...

CCN 2025 Satellite Event

Background The human visual system is full of optimisations—mechanisms designed to extract the most useful information from a constant stream of incoming data. The field of neuro-AI has made significa...

sites.google.com

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PessoaBrain @pessoabrain.bsky.social · Jun 23

𝗡𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗡𝗲𝘂𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲
Title of section 1 summarizes it:
"The problem: Reductionism and control vs natural behavior: from Descartes and Bacon to Natural Neuroscience"
The brain as a complex network.
Looks like a fantastic book.
#neuroskyence

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andrea e. martin @andreaeyleen.bsky.social · Jun 19

deadline 23 June!! Please re-bleat(??) widely!

andrea e. martin @andreaeyleen.bsky.social · May 20

my lab (lacns.github.io) at @mpi-nl.bsky.social and @dondersinst.bsky.social is recruiting for two PhD and two postdoctoral positions funded by an @erc.europa.eu Consolidator - come join us!

PhD: www.mpi.nl/career-educa...

Postdoc: www.mpi.nl/career-educa...

(please share widely)

Language and Computation in Neural Systems

We are an international group of scientists consisting of linguists, cognitive scientists, cognitive neuroscientists, computational neuroscientists, computational modellers, computational scientists, ...

lacns.github.io

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Ted Pavlic (he/him/his) @tedpavlic.bsky.social · Jun 8

Reminder: Nobel-prize winning PCR (1983), used in basically all genetic tech today, was only possible because of extremophile bacterium discovered in 1964 in Yellowstone funded by a small ~$80k NSF grant with no obvious application at the time. #science 🧪
www.richmondscientific.com/how-a-discov...

How a discovery in Yellowstone National Park led to the development of PCR - Richmond Scientific

A discovery in Yellowstone National Park led to the development of PCR, the gold-standard COVID-19 tests used to fight the global pandemic.

www.richmondscientific.com

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Matthieu Boisgontier @matthieuboisgontier.com · Jun 7

I think that’s clearly a win bsky.app/profile/imag...

Imaging Neuroscience @imagingneurosci.bsky.social · Apr 17

On this day 2y ago we announced our move away from the huge profits that NeuroImage makes for Elsevier.

Things at Imaging Neuroscience have progressed fantastically thanks to the support for this move by the brain imaging community and @mitpress.bsky.social. 565 papers published already!

Screenshot of the original tweet announcing our move, with 5K likes and 2M views.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Jun 5

The failure of the National Academy of Sciences USA to make a clear and unequivocal statement about the disastrous Trump administration science policies — it lets all of us down and dooms them to eventual irrelevance.

US science is being wrecked, and its leadership is fighting the last war

Facing an extreme budget, the National Academies hosted an event that ignored it.

arstechnica.com

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Matthias Guggenmos @mguggenmos.bsky.social · Jun 4

We have a PhD position for an upcoming project in metacognition research in Potsdam / Berlin. A great opportunity for those interested in cognitive modeling of confidence and EEG.

More information at coconeuro.github.io/phd2025

Kindly share this opportunity with potential candidates - Thanks!

Computation and Cognition @ HMU Potsdam

coconeuro.github.io

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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · Jun 2

Human neuroscience research has largely overlooked the mesoscale, which bridges cells and brain areas. But new advances in fMRI technology are changing that, writes Laurentius Huber @layerfmri.bsky.social.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/future-of-fm...

Imaging cortical layers to understand brain as network organ

This spatial scale, bridging cells and brain areas, has been overlooked in human brain research. But advances in fMRI technology are changing that.

www.thetransmitter.org

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Floris de Lange @predictivebrain.bsky.social · Jun 2

🚨PhD position alert!🚨
Joint PhD position with @fedemar.bsky.social @predictivebrain.bsky.social and Sonja Kotz, to investigate the neurobiological underpinnings of perceptual decisions
vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/job/Maastric...
Please share and if you have questions, send me a message!

PhD position in biological foundations of neural control

vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl

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Ian Bassin @ianbassin.bsky.social · May 31

No no no! These university leaders don’t get it. If you negotiate one on one you don’t buy peace; you just expose the whole sector and yourselves to more shakedowns. See law firms.

The only response is to unite in collective action and fight the Admin’s illegality. www.cnn.com/2025/05/31/p...

Universities quietly negotiating with White House aide to try to avoid Harvard’s fate, source says | CNN Politics

College and university leaders have been privately negotiating with a deputy to top Trump aide Stephen Miller in hopes of avoiding the same aggressive targeting of Harvard University, a person familia...

www.cnn.com

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Oded Rechavi @odedrechavi.bsky.social · May 31

"We thank the reviewers for their helpful comments"

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Johannes Fahrenfort @fahrenfort.bsky.social · May 29

Finally the Version of Record of our paper "Criterion placement threatens the construct validity of neural measures of consciousness" is out in @elife.bsky.social as *fundamental* and *compelling*!
doi.org/10.7554/eLif....

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