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Sacha van Albada

@albada.bsky.social

Computational neuroscientist chasing the secret of the brain. Junior professor at Jülich Research Center & University of Cologne.

10 Posts866 Follower408 Folgt
Aitor Morales-Gregorio@aitormg.bsky.social · 2y ago

DAY 6: Advent of Comp Neuro 🎄🤖🧠🧪 This nifty theory predicts how intrinsic timescales depend on network structure, neuron properties and input. A nontrivial task! “Microscopic theory of intrinsic timescales in spiking neural networks” tinyurl.com/43esfrrk By @avm.bsky.social and @albada.bsky.social

Figure 1 from van Meegen and van Albada 2021: Illustration of the theory. (a) We consider populations of randomly connected neurons ( 𝛼, 𝛽) that communicate via spike trains 𝑥𝛼𝑖⁡(𝑡). The neurons of population 𝛽 are connected to those of population 𝛼 with connection probability 𝑝𝛼⁢𝛽. (b) The theory reduces a population to a single neuron driven by an effective stochastic input 𝜂𝛼. The first- and second-order statistics 𝜇𝛼𝜂 and 𝐶𝛼𝜂 of 𝜂𝛼 depend self-consistently on the output statistics, 𝜈𝛼 and 𝐶𝛼𝑥. (c) From the stationary spike train autocorrelation function 𝐶𝑥⁡(𝜏)=𝜈⁢𝛿⁡(𝜏)+ˆ𝐶𝑥⁡(𝜏), we obtain the correlation time 𝜏𝑐, the asymptotic decay 𝜏∞, and the variability of the rate across neurons, 𝜎2𝜈. (d) Instead of the stationary autocorrelation function we sometimes consider the power spectrum 𝑆𝑥⁡(𝑓), which saturates at the firing rate, 𝑆𝑥⁡(𝑓)𝑓→∞−→𝜈, and, for a renewal process, has the zero-frequency limit 𝑆𝑥⁡(𝑓)𝑓→0−→𝜈⁢CV2. Throughout, we consider the population–averaged single-unit statistics (black curve) instead of the statistics of the population-averaged activity (gray curve).
Aitor Morales-Gregorio@aitormg.bsky.social · 2y ago

DAY 5: Advent of Comp Neuro 🎄🤖🧠🧪 Heavy-tailed distributions enable smooth transitions to chaos and other biologically realistic activity. “Edge of Chaos and Avalanches in Neural Networks with Heavy-Tailed Synaptic Weight Distribution” journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...

Grace Lindsay@neurograce.bsky.social · 2y ago

How do we fix academia's air travel problem? I've been declining invites in order to avoid flying and it feels weird at first but in my experience, organizers are very understanding and many will allow a virtual presentation. www.nature.com/articles/d41... #academiasky

Academics say flying to meetings harms the climate — but they carry on

A survey at one of the biggest UK research universities finds that staff often end up flying to meetings despite a preference to avoid air travel. A survey at one of the biggest UK research universiti...

nature.com

Matthijs Dorst@mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 2y ago

This randomly popped up in my feed, and I've got to share it since it's just such a "never even thought about this" kind of paper: www.cell.com/cell-reports... Neuron membrane capacitance oscillates wildly during the day?! 🧪🧠

Daily oscillations of neuronal membrane capacitance

Severin et al. describe time-of-day changes in membrane capacitance in excitatory neurons from the visual cortex and hippocampus. Membrane capacitance is usually stable. These daily variations could p...

cell.com

Richard Waite@waiterich.bsky.social · 2y ago

Fellow dudes. We eat a lot of beef. Eating less beef and more of nearly anything else would greatly reduce the climate impacts of our food choices. And we can still be manly men.

Eating less beef is a climate solution. Here's why that's hard for some American men

Climate researchers have long grappled with how to get Americans to eat less beef, a food with a huge global warming impact. Now some are thinking about it through the lens of gender.

npr.org

Berna Devezer@devezer.bsky.social · 2y ago

That's what Erdoğan's been doing in Turkey. I definitely do not recommend. It's heartbreaking watch everything that's been happening at my alma mater in recent years. Academically unqualified, state appointed bureaucrats gradually replacing admin and faculty ranks; faculty getting purged...

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Nash@radiodeadair.com · 2y ago

If you're new to Bluesky, you should know that since there's no algorithm the Like button is exclusively for *you.* It doesn't help a post move or spread. If you want to help spread people's work (especially creators whose work you enjoy) YOU HAVE TO RESKEET.

Sacha van Albada@albada.bsky.social · 2y ago

What's with the Bluesky algorithm? Despite having indicated about 30 times that I'm not interested in posts of people saying they're supposed to write a manuscript or are writing or editing a book, or asking for book suggestions, this is the main kind of post it keeps feeding me.