This September, I will join the @flatironinstitute.org Center for Computational Neuroscience as a Group Leader, where I will launch the High-Dimensional Dynamics & Computation Group. Information for postdocs and grad students is forthcoming. I am grateful to my mentors who made this possible!

Rare sea mammal just appeared off in Monterey Bay www.sfgate.com/centralcoast...

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sfgate.com

This was always a provocative idea, but recent data suggest: 1. Heat calls are extremely quiet, likely undetectable even by adult birds (post link) 2. Chicks cant hear until ~5 days post hatch, and sound vibrations are not detectable by vibrotactile senses in ovo www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Zebra finches produce soft laryngeal whistles during thermal panting that are not adaptive vocal signals

Zebra finch heat calls are suggested to have close-range communicative relevance in the global temperature rise context. Anttonen et al. identify the biophysical mechanism underlying these vocalizatio...

cell.com

Sarah Primate@langurlover.bsky.social · 2mo ago

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Clacking wing bones together to woo mates Male scissor-tailed nightjars create abrupt sounds by hitting the bones in their wings together High-speed infrared video analysis of sonations in the scissor-tailed nightjar Hydropsalis torquata🧪 nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Do you know an outstanding aquarist? We're hiring a Senior Aquarist to help run our cephalopod facility at Columbia University. Our team maintains a colony of 250+ cuttlefish, develops new husbandry techniques (inc transgenics) & studies cuttlefish camouflage and social behavior. 1/3 [Pls repost!]

Where, exactly, does learning happen in the brain? Out today in @nature.com, we identify a synaptic locus of birdsong learning and show that the circuit can be tuned to make birds learn faster - but at a cost. Read on👇 #neuroskyence 🧪 #prattle 💬 #bioacoustics Shareable link: rdcu.be/fiyrS

A synaptic locus of song learning - Nature

Combining a computational framework and optogenetic and chemogenetic manipulations within and downstream of the cortico-basal ganglia circuit identifies the specific cortico-basal ganglia synapse...

nature.com

Made a starter pack for attendees of the Neural Mechanisms of Acoustic Communication Gordon Conference. I'm sure I've missed people so let me know! go.bsky.app/57Ln8Bk

@factsmachinepod.bsky.social is doing a bird event next Thursday if any other bird-friends in nyc are interested! Ft. @lesscommonloons.bsky.social, Andrea Trigueros, & @sweatervestsci.bsky.social : caveat.nyc/events/facts...

Still time (May 3rd) to apply for one of my favorite conferences: Neural Mechanisms of Acoustic Communication GRC! Slots open for short talks/posters, come learn about communication across the animal kingdom! @nmac2026.bsky.social #Neuroskyence

New preprint: "Linear equivalence of nonlinear recurrent neural networks." For large nonlinear (potentially chaotic) RNNs with random connectivity, the full N×N covariance matrix takes the same form as that of a ~linear~ network with the same couplings, driven by independent noise.

Linear equivalence of nonlinear recurrent neural networks

Large nonlinear recurrent neural networks with random couplings generate high-dimensional, potentially chaotic activity whose structure is of interest in neuroscience, machine learning, ecology, and o...

arxiv.org

Super excited to (finally!) show our work on identifying cell types! Now in press www.nature.com/articles/s41.... We show how to identify cell types from ephys recordings *without* optotagging. This opens the study of not just individual cell types, but the interacting neural circuit during behavior

A single equation governs the brain’s flexible behavior and predicts how well brains and artificial networks can generalize across tasks. #neuroskyence By @natmesanash.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...

Error equation predicts brain’s ability to generalize

Four statistical measurements of neural network geometry capture how well brains and artificial networks use what they already know to solve new problems, a study suggests.

thetransmitter.org

We are excited to announce that registration is open for the 2026 Neural Mechanisms of Acoustic Communication Gordon Research Conference. The preliminary program is now live: www.grc.org/neural-mecha... We invite everyone to apply! See you @ Sunday River, Maine, May 31-June 5, 2026.

Finished another couple pages of my Japanese visual dictionary, otherwise known as my way to try and memorize vocabulary.

I'll be presenting some work comparing how humans and LMs make predictions at #HSP2026 this week, please reach out if you'd like to meet! Tomorrow, I'll have a poster on work with @byungdoh.bsky.social comparing cloze & LM surprisals as predictors of reading time hsp2026.org/abstracts/su...

How marine mammals stay hydrated in a salty sea | Popular Science

How marine mammals stay hydrated in a salty sea

From chomping down on water-rich prey to very salty pee.

popsci.com

How can machines achieve the kind of flexible learning mastered by our brains? That’s what our own @neurokim.bsky.social is trying to find out! Learn more about ARNI’s work on natural and artificial intelligence: youtu.be/gM8YCaiAWrc?... #BrainAwarenessWeek

ARNI: Memory Driven Learning with Kim Stachenfeld

YouTube video by Columbia Engineering

youtu.be

Cosyne invited me to give a long tutorial (4 hours!) on methods to quantify differences high-d neural recordings across animals, brain regions, deep neural nets, etc. The recording is up on youtube. I hope it inspires more research on this fundamental topic! www.youtube.com/watch?v=n44x...

Cosyne 2026 - Cosyne Tutorial: Comparative Analysis of Neural Population Codes

YouTube video by Cosyne Talks

youtube.com

Landscape Features xkcd.com/3221/

Hello #cosyne2026! Sadly I am present only in spectral form 🔮 (i.e. in spirit) Luckily Zetian and I managed to send a distinguished representative Check out our poster Saturday (3-075) on cortical control of vocalization in parrots!🦜🏴‍☠️ M Loooong himself is presenting so go give him a hard time ;)

[1-149] (Tonight!) Finally, in work w/ @omarschall.bsky.social and Ashok Litwin-Kumar, we develop a theory of multi-task computation: a network embeds many tasks in diff. subspaces, with task selection occurring through phase transitions from spontaneous activity to coherent task-relevant dynamics.

[3-157] In work w/ Albert Wakhloo and Larry Abbott, we showed that coupled neuronal-synaptic dynamics produce a dynamic memory effect in recurrent networks. Now, amazingly, Christine Liu finds this effect in human cortical organoids (🤯), and implicates plasticity via NMDA receptor blockade (🤯🤯)

I have just arrived at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social ! During my flight, as I thought about opening remarks (and had a glass of wine), I got to reflect on why I love neuroscience. Maybe other folks are doing the same and would like to read or add, so I thought I'd do something unusual and share!

I’ll be presenting some follow up work on this project at #COSYNE2026 [2-115] “Parallel dopamine signals support hierarchical reinforcement learning of motor sequences” Would love to talk with y’all about it!

Arnav Raha@arnavraha.bsky.social · last yr.

Excited to share our latest work! It’s been a great experience working on this (including building a whole new lab!) 😊 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

📣 Excited to announce the 2nd edition of our workshop “Agent-Based Models in Neuroscience: Theory, Autonomy, Embodiment & Environment” at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social #CoSyNe2026!! 🧠🤖🌍🪰🐟🐭💪🧘🏃 🗓️ March 17, 2026 📍 Cascais, Portugal 🔗 Speaker lineup and schedule: neuro-agent-models.github.io

I am totally pumped about this new work . "Task-trained RNNs" are a powerful and influential framework in neuroscience, but have lacked a firm theoretical footing. This work provides one, and makes direct contact with the classical theory of random RNNs: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Before moving here I was always under the impression that “Upstate New York” was explicitly meant to contrast with “New York (City)” ergo everything north of the Bronx is Upstate—is that not the case 😅

High frequencies in horse whinnies are whistles 🐎 One of the most common vocalizations, the whinny, has two independent frequency components: low and high. This unusual phenomenon is termed "biphonation". The origin of the high frequency component has remained mysterious until now. Find out more: ⤵️

High frequencies in horse whinnies are whistles

The domesticated horse, Equus caballus, is a familiar and beloved species to humans around the world. Despite living closely with humans for over 4000 years, horse vocal communication is poorly under...

lifesciences.univie.ac.at

The French word ‘aujourd’hui’ (today) consists of ‘au’ (on the), ‘jour’ (day), ‘de’ (of) and ‘hui’ (today). It was formed during the late Middle Ages. However, many Romance words come from even older combinations. Some are hardly identifiable as such anymore. Click my new graphics to explore them: