David Jones
@davidjonesbrain.bsky.social
Behavioral neurologist and AI director working to end degeneration of mental function and use technology to transform the practice of neurology. Neuro AI Program (NAIP) https://naip.mayo.edu https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj9q9jnuNZNNZnx48-P1vkg
How many have untreated NPH? What percentage would that answer need to be in order to use resources for proper diagnostics?
Ian Kremer@wolverinebear.bsky.social · 7h agoOne in six hospital beds filled by dementia patients www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2026/au... #Alzheimers #dementia #caregiving #health #geriatrics #gerontology
Dementia impacts cognition and individual’s conscious experience and FDG-PET best indexes these disturbances across all dementia etiologies in routine clinical settings. The Global Functional State Space is a useful model of this. These results in perturbation of consciousness reflect this as well.
bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 2mo agoThe blueprint of human functional architecture shifts from cognition to anatomy during perturbations of consciousness https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.07.730661v1
🧠 New paper out in 𝘉𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯 Why does tau pathology often begin in the entorhinal cortex in Alzheimer’s disease? We show that brain-wide gradients of neuronal activity and amyloid-β may make this region particularly vulnerable to tau pathology. academic.oup.com/brain/articl...
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
doi.org
How does the brain rapidly distinguish similar memories? We use 7T fMRI to show dynamic shifts between pattern separation and reinstatement signals in hippocampal CA3 and DG with changing task demands: doi.org/10.64898/202...
Using a detection task with stimuli right at threshold, whole cell recordings in NHP primary visual cortex, and choice probabilities, we demonstrate how internal fluctuations related to anticipation of a stimulus multiplicatively interact with sensory responses.
Fluctuating internal states mediate neural–behavioral covariations in V1 - Nature Neuroscience
The authors report surprising covariations between subthreshold activity of single V1 neurons and behavior, demonstrating that interactions between external sensory inputs and internal states are impl...
nature.com
What would a degenerative disease of this process look like in human beings?
Tom Stafford@tomstafford.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy · 5mo agoWhen time is critical, smart decision-making requires simplicity not complexity New newsletter: https://tomstafford.substack.com/p/interception-at-10000-miles-an-hour Full of #DecisionMaking #CognitiveScience goodness. And a nice bit of military history #Cybernetics
Interesting! What about the reverse? If you damage oligodendrocytes, do you damage CA1 electrophysiology?
TK (Takashi DY) Kozai@bioniclab.bsky.social · 5mo agoNew paper from UPitt Neural Engineering Cross-Translation (UP NExT) Initiative Tuning a single gene in myelin-producing brain cells improved long-term neural recording quality in the hippocampus over 16 weeks.
Cortical oscillations reflect opponent ensemble dynamics through coordinated multifrequency activity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.20.707132v1
Beyond metaphor: quantitative reconstruction of Waddington's landscape and exploration of cellular behavior academic.oup.com/bib/article/... - really nice review of how big data and new computational methods and reviving an old conceptual framework
Beyond metaphor: quantitative reconstruction of Waddington landscape and exploration of cellular behavior
Abstract. Originally proposed as a conceptual metaphor, the Waddington landscape was used to illustrate the directional nature of embryonic development and
academic.oup.com
🚨PREPRINT In our new paper, we link RNNs and neural manifolds by introducing the DDM framework. We can train networks to embed an arbitary dynamical system in a latent subspace. We illustrate this with simple models of input-driven and autonomous associative memory. Enjoy! arxiv.org/abs/2602.14885
Drift-Diffusion Matching: Embedding dynamics in latent manifolds of asymmetric neural networks
Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) provide a theoretical framework for understanding computation in biological neural circuits, yet classical results, such as Hopfield's model of associative memory, rel...
arxiv.org
Our paper is out in @natneuro.nature.com! www.nature.com/articles/s41... We develop a geometric theory of how neural populations support generalization across many tasks. @zuckermanbrain.bsky.social @flatironinstitute.org @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social 1/14
Here are individual FDG-PET brain scans from 4 patients with dysexecutive Alzheimer’s disease displayed in StateViewer. Does this look variation along the principal gradient of functional connectivity? Is this biology contributing to your model of Alzheimer’s disease?
Most people can call up pictures in their minds, visualizing the past & summoning images of the future. But for ~4% of us, such mental imagery is weak or absent. New edition of @nature.com has a nice introduction to how research on this phenomenon (aphantasia) opens up novel windows into the brain.🧪
Many people have no mental imagery. What’s going on in their brains?
People with aphantasia are offering a window into consciousness.
nature.com
Fascinating neuropsych article from 1919 of a patient with spatial disorientation, with a loss of mental imagery for routes: watermark02.silverchair.com/archneurpsyc...
Bruce Springsteen released a pointedly emotional protest song Wednesday, amid widespread outrage over sweeping immigration raids that have led to violence and fatal shootings at the hands of federal agents.
Bruce Springsteen releases searing protest song in ‘Streets of Minneapolis’
“Streets of Minneapolis” names Renée Good and Alex Pretti, and excoriates “King Trump.”
wapo.st
Block that acetylcholine and just doesn't feel worth it any more... Cholinergic modulation of dopamine release drives effortful behaviour www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Cholinergic modulation of dopamine release drives effortful behaviour - Nature
In the nucleus accumbens, acetylcholine boosts dopamine release to promote effortful behaviour.
nature.com
The hippocampal map has its own attentional control signal! Our new study reveals that theta #sweeps can be instantly biased towards behaviourally relevant locations. See 📹 in post 4/6 and preprint here 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵(1/6)
Attention-like regulation of theta sweeps in the brain's spatial navigation circuit
Spatial attention supports navigation by prioritizing information from selected locations. A candidate neural mechanism is provided by theta-paced sweeps in grid- and place-cell population activity, which sample nearby space in a left-right-alternating pattern coordinated by parasubicular direction signals. During exploration, this alternation promotes uniform spatial coverage, but whether sweeps can be flexibly tuned to locations of particular interest remains unclear. Using large-scale Neuropixels recordings in freely-behaving rats, we show that sweeps and direction signals are rapidly and dynamically modulated: they track moving targets during pursuit, precede orienting responses during immobility, and reverse during backward locomotion — without prior spatial learning. Similar modulation occurs during REM sleep. Canonical head-direction signals remain head-aligned. These findings identify sweeps as a flexible, attention-like mechanism for selectively sampling allocentric cognitive maps. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. European Research Council, Synergy Grant 951319 (EIM) The Research Council of Norway, Centre of Neural Computation 223262 (EIM, MBM), Centre for Algorithms in the Cortex 332640 (EIM, MBM), National Infrastructure grant (NORBRAIN, 295721 and 350201) The Kavli Foundation, https://ror.org/00kztt736 Ministry of Science and Education, Norway (EIM, MBM) Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences; NTNU, Norway (AZV)
biorxiv.org
While AI systems have advanced tremendously, they still lag behind real brains in reliability & efficiency. A new computational unit developed at #FlatironCCN could help close that gap: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/biological-brains-inspire-a-new-building-block-for-artificial-neural-networks
Biological Brains Inspire a New Building Block for Artificial Neural Networks
Biological Brains Inspire a New Building Block for Artificial Neural Networks on Simons Foundation
simonsfoundation.org
Seems fitting to use #GenAI to help explain our new model of dementia and the hippocampus as a latent diffusion engine! Here is NotebookLM generated podcast on these topics: open.substack.com/pub/consilie...
AI Brain Scans and the Generative Hippocampus
NotebookLM explains StateViewer, FDG-PET, and SLOD
open.substack.com
People have been looking at "AI & brains" through the lens of LLMs/transformers. But what latent diffusion? (think text-to-image/video platforms such as Midjourney). **Class conditioned latent diffusion and semantically cued hippocampus share a remarkably similar computational architecture...**
David Jones@davidjonesbrain.bsky.social · 7mo ago🧵1/12 What if the DMN, limbic system, hippocampus, neural oscillations, gradients, dementia syndromes, mixed pathology, and aphantasia all fall out of the same generative brain computation? 🤯#endalz Introducing #SLOD (preprint): a new #NeuroAI framework w/ @drbreaky.bsky.social
It bears repeating today: real patriots do not murder people. #RIPAlexPretti
Ian Kremer@wolverinebear.bsky.social · 7mo agoReal patriots do not murder people.
🧵1/12 What if the DMN, limbic system, hippocampus, neural oscillations, gradients, dementia syndromes, mixed pathology, and aphantasia all fall out of the same generative brain computation? 🤯#endalz Introducing #SLOD (preprint): a new #NeuroAI framework w/ @drbreaky.bsky.social
a man in a suit is making a funny face and says `` mind blown '' while standing in a bar .
ALT: a man in a suit is making a funny face and says `` mind blown '' while standing in a bar .
media.tenor.com
Pretty amazing to give this lecture here! Thank you University of Iowa Department of Neurology!
David Jones@davidjonesbrain.bsky.social · 7mo agoExcited to head out to Iowa City @universityofiowa.bsky.social for the Baden Lecture Neurology Grand Rounds on 01/06/26: "Dementia as a Disorder of Generative Human Intelligence" #endalz #neuro #AI @mayoclinic.org
Excited to head out to Iowa City @universityofiowa.bsky.social for the Baden Lecture Neurology Grand Rounds on 01/06/26: "Dementia as a Disorder of Generative Human Intelligence" #endalz #neuro #AI @mayoclinic.org
As we are having a discussion on neural codes: @earlkmiller.bsky.social is entirely right that the "only spike rates matter" idea that is so prominent in neuroscience has no credible evidence. We simply do not currently know how neurons code relevant information. Oscillations are likely part of it.
