Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Tom Donoghue @tomdonoghue.bsky.social · 1d

📜 New preprint led by the wonderful Weijia Zhang on place cells: specifically if & how different methodological approaches used across human & rodent datasets may relate to differences in identified populations and implications for cross-species spatial cognition!

Check it out here:

Weijia Z @weijiazh.bsky.social · 1d

🚀 New Preprint from our team: comparing place cells across species!
Disentangling methods from biology provides a roadmap for cross-species insights into spatial coding 🌍
👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Reposted by Tom Donoghue

Richard Gao @rdgao.bsky.social · 15d

I've been waiting some years to make this joke and now it’s real:

I conned somebody into giving me a faculty job!

I’m starting as a W1 Tenure-Track Professor at Goethe University Frankfurt in a week (lol), in the Faculty of CS and Math

and I'm recruiting PhD students 🤗

a man wearing a white shirt and tie smiles in front of a window

ALT: a man wearing a white shirt and tie smiles in front of a window

media.tenor.com

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Reposted by Tom Donoghue

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 21d

🚨 NEW: Climate change is already causing 30,000 deaths per year - a global annual economic loss of $100-350B USD - but the true damage is probably 10x higher. Out TODAY in Nature Climate Change: the first systematic look at the science of "health impact attribution" 🔓 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"Health losses attributed to anthropogenic climate change," a brief communication in the journal Nature Climate Change. There's a map showing regions of the world, and pie charts of relevant studies as they apply to different health impacts like "heat-related deaths" and "maternal and child health"

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Reposted by Tom Donoghue

The Guardian @theguardian.com · Sep 8

Mahmoud Khalil on exile, liberation and Ice detention: ‘It was a clear act of cruelty’

His grandparents survived the Nakba and he fled Assad’s Syria. Khalil is no stranger to political persecution, but not even Trump’s crackdown can silence him

www.theguardian.com

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
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Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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Tom Donoghue @tomdonoghue.bsky.social · Sep 1

Project repository and open materials here:

github.com/TomDonoghue/...

GitHub - TomDonoghue/AperiodicHistory: A project exploring and reviewing the analysis and discussion of aperiodic neural activity through time.

A project exploring and reviewing the analysis and discussion of aperiodic neural activity through time. - TomDonoghue/AperiodicHistory

github.com

Tom Donoghue @tomdonoghue.bsky.social · Sep 1

📜 I've updated my perspective piece covering a brief history of the study of aperiodic neural activity - adding a bit more work and adding an update of what I think this history suggests for future research.

Preprint available on psyrxiv here:
osf.io/preprints/ps...

OSF

osf.io

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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · Sep 1

Neurociencias Para Todos brings neuroscience education to remote communities in Mexico. @analog-ashley.bsky.social‬ talked with founder Monica López-Hidalgo about the program’s efforts and the importance of making neuroscience accessible to all.

www.thetransmitter.org/community/br...

Bringing neuroscience to rural Mexico

Monica López-Hidalgo’s outreach program, Neurociencias Para Todos, gives schoolteachers tools to bring neuroscience to their communities.

www.thetransmitter.org

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Reposted by Tom Donoghue

Dan Nexon @dhnexon.bsky.social · Aug 30

🧵 Authoritarianism, Democratization, and Coalition Politics.

The consensus around here is, more or less, that the United States is currently a consolidating authoritarian regime controlled by a mix of reactionary populists and fascists.

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Tom Donoghue @tomdonoghue.bsky.social · Aug 28

Oh wow, sounds like I need to go and find out what the Alaska secret recipe is!

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Tom Donoghue @tomdonoghue.bsky.social · Aug 25

I would love to know what the Michigan secret is in "Michigan Fried Chicken".

Also special shout out to "Havana Burgers & Shakes" for trying a different naming scheme at least...

Tom Donoghue @tomdonoghue.bsky.social · Aug 25

Apparently in (Northern?) England it's common to name fast food places by putting "{American place name} Fried Chicken".

Just today I've walked past places called {Atlanta, Arizona, California, Georgia, Orlando, Michigan, Virginia} Fried Chicken - and my personal favourite:
"Toronto Fried Chicken"

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Reposted by Tom Donoghue

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · Aug 23

I’m sorry but the “should scientists be activists” train left the station for the last time when we started spending billions to build concentration camps. I feel like you guys are engaging with the science stuff as though the camps thing is like, happening on a different TV show

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Tom Donoghue @tomdonoghue.bsky.social · Aug 21

Also - the updated inclusion range goes to reports available as a preprint or in a journal by Dec 31st, 2024. The review has a broad scope across basically all clinical investigations - I searched a lot to find everything, but if you think I missed anything let me know & I will try to add it!

Tom Donoghue @tomdonoghue.bsky.social · Aug 21

I was going to link to a previous thread on this but apparently I didn't share it on bsky (oops) so I'll just add a) I think / hope it's a useful review & discussion of a rapidly expanding area of work and b) code & materials (including literature data) available here:
github.com/TomDonoghue/...

GitHub - TomDonoghue/AperiodicClinical: Systematic review of clinically related investigations of aperiodic activity.

Systematic review of clinically related investigations of aperiodic activity. - TomDonoghue/AperiodicClinical

github.com

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Tom Donoghue @tomdonoghue.bsky.social · Aug 21

I've updated my literature review of studies of aperiodic neural activity in clinical disorders, adding ~30 papers, taking it to 177 reports across 38 disorders!

It's got a review of results so far, discussion of themes & issues, & recommendations for future work!

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

A systematic review of aperiodic neural activity in clinical investigations

Aperiodic neural activity - activity with no characteristic frequency - has increasingly become a common feature of study, including in clinical work. Reports investigating aperiodic activity from pat...

www.medrxiv.org

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Reposted by Tom Donoghue

Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · Aug 20

At this point, I am ready to become a dedicated patron to brands and businesses that have a principled stand against pushing AI as part of their offerings and vocally commit to smooth, lean/unbloated, pleasant basic customer experience.

WIRED @wired.com · Aug 19

As Adobe rolls out more generative AI features for the PDF, the era of chatbot-less software is firmly a thing of the past.

The AI-Powered PDF Marks the End of an Era

As Adobe rolls out more generative AI features for the PDF, the era of chatbot-less software is firmly a thing of the past.

wrd.cm

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Reposted by Tom Donoghue

Emily P Stephen @emilypstephen.bsky.social · Aug 19

We have an opening for a post doc to help us quantify neurovascular coupling with simultaneous EEG/fNIRS data -- spread the word! With David Boas and Mike Esterman

MathJobs from the the American Mathematical Society

Mathjobs is an automated job application system sponsored by the AMS.

www.mathjobs.org

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Reposted by Tom Donoghue

Neurodata Without Borders @nwb.org · Aug 18

NWB just turned 10 years old! Researchers worldwide have downloaded 1.9 PB of NWB data from @dandiarchive.org. This animation shows the reach of NWB, facilitating collaboration across the globe. What impact has open neurophysiology data had on your science? Share your stories! 🧠

@openscience

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Tom Donoghue @tomdonoghue.bsky.social · Aug 14

My work uses lots of open-resources. I had so many notes and links saved during my PhD that I decided to this page to share and outsource these lists of resources. In the time since it's been great to see so many things added! Thanks to everyone who has made and shared all these great resources!

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Tom Donoghue @tomdonoghue.bsky.social · Aug 14

Linked above is the website version, but really the whole project is a Github organization where people can suggest / add / edit listing and so on - info on the linked Github page.

Please do suggest anything you think would be useful and/or report any dead links, etc!

github.com/openlists/Ov...

GitHub - openlists/Overview: An overview of the OpenLists organization, and description of the available lists.

An overview of the OpenLists organization, and description of the available lists. - GitHub - openlists/Overview: An overview of the OpenLists organization, and description of the available lists.

github.com

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Tom Donoghue @tomdonoghue.bsky.social · Aug 14

Seems as good a time as any to re-share the "OpenLists" collection - an openly accessible set of lists of available resources in / for Cognitive Neuroscience!

Includes open M/EEG & iEEG datasets & open software / analysis tools, and resources for DSP, Python, git, etc:

openlists.github.io

OpenLists

Curated lists of Open Resources.

openlists.github.io

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Reposted by Tom Donoghue

Tim Guth @timaguth.bsky.social · Aug 11

Excited to share our new paper on theta-phase locking of single neurons during human spatial memory:

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

With @lukaskunz.bsky.social, Joshua Jacobs, and our colleagues from the University of Freiburg

Neuronal theta-phase locking increased during periods of elevated theta power, when aperiodic activity exhibited steeper slopes, and when clear theta oscillations were detected. Theta-phase locking was similarly strong during the successful and unsuccessful encoding and retrieval of memories. Some neurons changed their preferred theta phases between encoding and retrieval.

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Tom Donoghue @tomdonoghue.bsky.social · Aug 9

I feel like it explains like 60% of the tea drinking, cus you can just like, make a cuppa and it's ready, as opposed to having to schedule it in in North America lol

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