We’re recruiting a full-time lab manager to join the Shared Minds Lab at USC! This will be a great opportunity for someone who wants to get hands-on experience with research before starting a PhD program in psychology or neuroscience. More below:

Brain-machine interfaces are better when decoding exploits the intrinsic manifold geometry of brain activity, by @elbusch.bsky.social et al. Translates electrophys work (sadtler 2014 Nat Neuro) to humans, bridging fields (sys and cog neuro) that need far more crosstalk. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Human learning of noninvasive brain–computer interfaces via manifold geometry - Nature Neuroscience

Busch et al. use nonlinear neural manifolds to help humans gain rapid control over a noninvasive brain–computer interface, allowing them to learn how to play a video game with real-time fMRI neurofeed...

nature.com

Interesting work on low dimensionality of higher order neural representations in PFC.

Earl K. Miller@earlkmiller.bsky.social · 4mo ago

New results! The prefrontal cortex uses a compact, low-dimensional “coding space”. Information can be captured in just 3–6 dimensions. The brain compresses what we remember. Low-dimensional prefrontal representations of objects during working memory doi.org/10.64898/202... #neuroscience

Really delighted to get copies of our new book, Elements of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. A labor of love over the past 10 years, along with @fmristats. Available for pre-order: mitpress.mit.edu/978026204504...

Good summary of the state of our understanding of representational drift. Personally interested in it as a solution to catastrophic forgetting in artificial neural nets. Hasn’t been fully established or profiled in humans yet either, raising an interesting possible direction for future work.

Nature@nature.com · 5mo ago

“It absolutely defied all of our expectations. This was so surprising that my whole project changed.” This phenomenon could have far-reaching implications, and is leaving neuroscientists baffled. go.nature.com/4wEzuzH

I’m very sad to share that Howard Fields has died. He made seminal discoveries in pain modulation, placebo, and addiction. He was also a wonderful mentor and friend who taught me how to think about the brain and the joy of scientific discovery. www.iasp-pain.org/publications...

In Memory of Howard L. Fields - International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP)

IASP is deeply saddened to hear of the recent death of Honorary IASP Member, Prof Howard Fields, and we offer our condolences to his family, friends and colleagues. We are […]

iasp-pain.org

This is the May cover of NN but it has already been debunked on biorxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Such a clear statement about the ridiculous pace of publishing (not just NN).

Nature Neuroscience@natneuro.nature.com · 5mo ago

Check out our May issue! www.nature.com/neuro/volume...

Backprop in artificial neural networks (ANNs) is famously biologically implausible. This paper hints at an alternative solution to the credit assignment problem: spatial segregation along cortical dendrites instead of feed fwd v. err feedback type temporal segregation. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Vectorized instructive signals in cortical dendrites - Nature

Mice learning a neurofeedback brain–computer interface task show neuron-specific teaching signals in cortical dendrites, consistent with a vectorized solution for credit assignment in the brain.

nature.com

Brain maps differ between people, but whether encoded information also differs depends on where you look. In some regions different layouts encode the same information, and representations converge like in artificial neural networks (ANNs). New preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Some billionaire recently advocated against introspection (tinyurl.com/y2rkty43), claiming it was a modern invention. Reminds me of a paper claiming introspection may be culturally contingent, and rises and falls with social cataclysms like world wars (tinyurl.com/4yttw84s). Fun read.

Dimensionality reduction may be the wrong approach to understanding neural representations. Our new paper shows that across human visual cortex, dimensionality is unbounded and scales with dataset size—we show this across nearly four orders of magnitude. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

www.economist.com/finance-and-... There is no substitute for American scientific investment. Since 1945, when Vannevar Bush convinced Truman of the merits of public research funding, only Russia and China have even tried to compete. If the USG stops funding science, the global economy will feel it.

America’s scientific prowess is a huge global subsidy

And it is now under threat

economist.com

Our new @NatureHumBehav paper shows why we need a holistic pain biomarker framework. ML on blood tests, brain/bone imaging & genetics predicts clinical diagnoses but falls short on subjective pain. Adding psychosocial (mood, sleep, stress) boosts both. shorturl.at/vxxeO

Biological markers and psychosocial factors predict chronic pain conditions - Nature Human Behaviour

Fillingim et al. show that biological and psychosocial factors jointly predict conditions associated with chronic pain.

shorturl.at

“A 25 percent reduction in public R&D spending would reduce GDP by … [an effect] comparable to the decline in GDP during the Great Recession.” tinyurl.com/vweadewh Meanwhile the government is proposing a 44% cut to the NIH www.science.org/content/arti...

Good article touching all key points succinctly. “U.S. government … research and development has accounted for at least 1/5 of total factor productivity growth in the U.S. business sector … a greater return than than private R & D has produced.” www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

America’s Coming Brain Drain

Trump’s war on universities could kill U.S. innovation.

foreignaffairs.com

Human ctrl of neural interfaces is more effective when the intrinsic neural manifold is accounted for. biorxiv.org/content/10.1... First demoed in macaque by @aaronbatista.bsky.social now translated to humans by @elbusch.bsky.social. Gotta pay attn to those animal population code manifold studies!

Accelerated learning of a noninvasive human brain-computer interface via manifold geometry

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) promise to restore and enhance a wide range of human capabilities. However, a barrier to the adoption of BCIs is how long it can take users to learn to control them. W...

biorxiv.org