If an action results in error, each neuron requires an individualized teaching signal that guides change in its output. This is the credit assignment problem of learning. Are there neurons in the brain that can compute such a sophisticated teaching signal? Yes. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Climbing fibers encode the gradient of a loss function for the cerebellum

Neurons in the brain are often many synapses away from motoneurons, yet if a movement results in error, each distant neuron needs a teacher that considers its specific contribution to production of th...

biorxiv.org

The PhD position in our lab closes 31 July - apply now!

Peter Kok@peterkok.bsky.social · last mo.

And the PhD position is here: www.findaphd.com/phds/project... Deadline: 31 July. Sadly the PhD position is only available to students eligible for UK home fees. 3/3

1/5 Over a decade of comparing deep neural networks to the human brain—but what have we actually learned? Our new @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social Feature Review synthesizes a decade of brain–DNN comparisons, asking what they reveal about brain function across vision and language.

The hippocampus sits at the interface of perception & memory, allowing us to link past, present, & future through its role in generating predictions. Excited to share this theme issue in @royalsociety.org's Philosophical Transactions B, co-edited with @barense.bsky.social & @mariamaly.bsky.social

Volume 381 Issue 1954 | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B | The Royal Society

Influential themed journal issues across the life sciences.

royalsocietypublishing.org

What matters most for childhood brain organization? We analyzed 649 variables. The answer: Socioeconomics (SES); with brain patterns pointing at sleep & stress as drivers. Even brain-IQ associations were better explained by SES. In Science today: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

[Consciousness Radio] Prof Anina Rich - on synesthesia, attention, consciousness youtu.be/BF8xKOo9PeA?... via @YouTube chat with Anna, Anson and Nao at sunny MBI.

[Consciousness Radio] Prof Anina Rich - on synesthesia, attention, consciousness

YouTube video by Neural basis of Consciousness & Qualia Structure

youtu.be

📢 Rare academic 💎 alert 📢 We’re hiring a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer (Level B/C) in Psychology & Cognitive Neuroscience @ Swinburne (Melbourne). Teach a brand‑new degree + access MRI, MEG, EEG & TMS/tDCS. ⏰ Apply by 17 May 2026, 11 pm 🔗 swinjobs.nga.net.au/cp/index.cfm... Reach out for more info.

🏰 New preprint! 🏰 (w/ the excellent @neuronomist.bsky.social & Prof. Jason Mattingley) For my PhD I've been using EEG, psychophysics and modelling to explore how the brain uses uncertainty to balance sensory information against expectations about what's out there. 🧵1/n

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Late Integration of Prior Expectations During Precision Weighted Perceptual Decisions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.13.718329v1

Using time-resolved EEG/MEG decoding?🧠 Here’s a new approach! No feature engineering (decode from raw signals), but capturing info that standard decoding often misses (oscillatory/aperiodic activity, connectivity). Lightweight, INTERPRETABLE, and easy to use. (1/6) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🧵 New preprint led by @bingbrunton.bsky.social, @elliottabe.bsky.social, @lawrencehu.bsky.social We gave a worm brain control of a fly body and it walked What did we learn? Nothing, other than deep reinforcement learning is effective We call it the digital sphinx www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Excited to share that our MEG project is now out in Current Biology! We show how visual content codes relate to motor oscillations in telling time. Huge thanks to Quirin Gehmacher, Peter Kok, Matt Davis and Clare Press (bsky links below).🧵 authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

📣 PsychoPy Studio is out now!! ✨ Which also means swish new branding on psychopy.org ✨ We really hope that this improves user experience in general. Please download and try it. Let us know how you get on via the forum discourse.psychopy.org/t/introducin...

Our first meeting for 2026 is just 5 days away! To kick things off we have 2 awesome Tims presenting their research @tvcottier.bsky.social & @tgastrell.bsky.social You can join in-person or online via Zoom - register here to receive the link 👇 uniofqueensland.syd1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

It was my pleasure! :) FYI: @psychopy.org is looking for more Australian Ambassadors. Definitely reach out if you're interested!

PsychoPy@psychopy.org · 6mo ago

A big thank you to @brainboyben.bsky.social for running our first PsychoPy workshop at ACNS in November! Would you like to run a workshop in Australia? Find out about our Ambassador Scheme and read about Bens experience 👇

Introducing @brisepsi.bsky.social - we're an experimental psychology initiative run by grad students in Brisbane (Meanjin) across UQ & QUT 🧠 We host a monthly dose of freshly baked research (students, ECRs, & bigwigs) followed by social goodness. Help us grow with a follow! 🤗 #neuroskyence

'to treat peer review as a throughput problem is to misunderstand what is at stake. Review is not simply a production stage in the research pipeline; it is one of the few remaining spaces where the scientific community talks to itself.' 1/3

AI is not a peer, so it can’t do peer review

If we still believe that science is a vocation grounded in argument, curiosity and care, we can’t delegate judgement to machines, says Akhil Bhardwaj

timeshighereducation.com

He’s simply a grifter

Caitlin Gilbert@caitlingilbert.bsky.social · 6mo ago

In response to announcement that he will be a new CBS contributor, Andrew Huberman tweeted “I’ve always gone issue-by-issue on health & science, spoken to experts w/a range of takes & presented where I see the center of (data) mass pointed. I’ll do the same with @CBSNews”. In Sept he posted this:

Interpreting EEG requires understanding how the skull smears electrical fields as they propagate from the cortex. I made a browser-based simulator for my EEG class to visualize how dipole depth/orientation change the topomap. dbrang.github.io/EEG-Dipole-D... Github page: github.com/dbrang/EEG-D...

Most popular decision-making models assume that cognitive processes are static over time. In our new paper in Psych Review, we offer a simple extension to evidence accumulation models that lets researchers account for systematic changes in parameters across time 📈 psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Our publishing system does not prioritise or value the careful curation of research data to be FAIR nearly enough. I have been data editing for AP&P for a year now, and it is sad to see no reward for the clearly careful organisation of data and materials vs that which is thrown on OSF with no care!

a cartoon of donald duck says " and a bah humbug " to you

ALT: a cartoon of donald duck says " and a bah humbug " to you

media.tenor.com

And it's out now in Cortex: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Summary below 🧵

The latency of a domain-general visual surprise signal is attribute dependent

Predictions concerning upcoming visual input play a key role in resolving percepts. Sometimes input is surprising, under which circumstances the brain…

sciencedirect.com

Benjamin Lowe@brainboyben.bsky.social · 12mo ago

🚨Pre-print of some cool data from my PhD days! doi.org/10.1101/2025... ☝️Did you know that visual surprise is (probably) a domain-general signal and/or operates at the object-level? ✌️Did you also know that the timing of this response depends on the specific attribute that violates an expectation?

High-level visual surprise is rapidly integrated during perceptual inference! 🚨 New paper 🚨 out now in @cp-iscience.bsky.social with @paulapena.bsky.social and @mruz.bsky.social www.cell.com/iscience/ful... Summary 🧵 below 👇

Rapid computation of high-level visual surprise

Health sciences

cell.com

And it was an absolute treat to run! Thanks everyone who attended :) #ACNS2025

PsychoPy@psychopy.org · 11mo ago

Shout out to Australian researchers! 🇦🇺 (and folks in the southern hemisphere) 🌏 We're excited that our Ambassador Ben Lowe (@brainboyben.bsky.social) will be hosting a pre-conference workshop at #ACNS2025 (@acnsau.bsky.social) on getting started with PsychoPy! Sign up here👇 shorturl.at/gvnUU

Tim Cottier @tvcottier.bsky.social introduces a novel face triad task to explore whether super-recognisers decipher the identity, valence or gaze of faces. When asked which face is distinct out of the three, super-recognisers preference identity information more than controls! #ASPP2025

Road trippin’ to ACNS 2025, Melbourne! @matthewod.bsky.social @tvcottier.bsky.social (Plus Ella and Seri) @acnsau.bsky.social

Maybe a bit of a downer, but I think this conversation may be of interest to a bunch of people on here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSbK...

Decades of neoliberalism have broken our universities

YouTube video by The Australia Institute

youtube.com

Getting nervous for the talk I'm about to give at a workshop about "using AI to drive impact" which features slides such as these.

New paper! After a distraction, rotating traveling waves steer brain processing back to where it should be. State–Space Trajectories and Traveling Waves Following Distraction direct.mit.edu/jocn/article... #neuroscience

State–Space Trajectories and Traveling Waves Following Distraction

Abstract. Cortical activity shows the ability to recover from distractions. We analyzed neural activity from the pFC of monkeys performing working memory tasks with mid-memory delay distractions (a cu...

direct.mit.edu

A poll from the journal Nature found that 75% of researchers in the U.S. are considering leaving the country. That includes a man who’s been dubbed the "Mozart of Math." Stephanie Sy examines what’s behind a potential scientific brain drain.

Top researchers consider leaving U.S. amid funding cuts: 'The science world is ending'

YouTube video by PBS NewsHour

youtube.com

A wonderful paper!

dorottya hetenyi@dotproduct.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Super happy to share my very first first-author paper out in @sfnjournals.bsky.social! We show content-specific predictions are represented in an alpha rhythm. It’s been a beautiful, inspiring, yet challenging journey. Huge thanks to everyone, especially @peterkok.bsky.social @jhaarsma.bsky.social