Nico Schuck
@nicoschuck.bsky.social
Algorithms of the Mind. Cognitive Neuroscience Prof at Uni Hamburg. http://schucklab.gitlab.io/
Excited to share that I'll be starting as a junior professor and Emmy Noether awardee at the University of Göttingen this October! 🥳 🚀 I'll be hiring #phd students and #postdoc across #machinelearning, #neuroscience and #cogsci: modirlab.github.io/open-positio... Please spread the word! 🙏
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
Excited to see this paper on learning about how to learn out in eLIFE, spearheaded by Jonas Simoens and the team from Ghent incl @sebraem.bsky.social @pieterverbeke.bsky.social and Tom Verguts)
Ghent Center for Cognitive Neuroscience@ghentccn.bsky.social · 4w agoTwo time scales of adaptation in human learning rates doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
Made this overview of the intellectual history leading up to today's LLMs for my course. Any "must-have" stepping stones I missed? #NeuroAI #compneurosky #neuroskyence
📣Going to #cpconf? Come see @luiantaverra.bsky.social A2 Tue 9am, Bidirectional relationship between aversive beliefs + avoidance & its association with transdiagnostic symptoms @alexnitsch.bsky.social B43 Wed 3:15pm, The role of aversive replay in avoidance behaviors in psychiatric disorders
Online Now: What can we learn from studying replay in humans?
What can we learn from studying replay in humans?
Noninvasive methods are making it possible to study neural replay in humans. Although focused on alignment with rodent findings, human research often tacitly assumes that replay is linked to conscious, deliberate thought. This assumption represents a missed opportunity to investigate the links between replay and consciousness, as well as cross-species differences more broadly.
dlvr.it
Very excited to share our new review on C-HORSE, our model of the hippocampus! We think there is very encouraging alignment between C-HORSE proposals and the extant empirical literature, though we also note plenty of areas for further model development. royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...
Evidence for complementary learning systems within the hippocampus
Abstract. Decades of research have established the hippocampus as central to episodic memory, but growing evidence suggests that it also contributes to str
royalsocietypublishing.org
We're finally getting the tools to study replay in humans. But why bother? What can we learn from it that we don't know from rodent recordings? Our thoughts are now out in a new TICS Forum Great fun writing this w @smfleming.bsky.social + @maritpetzka.bsky.social authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...
What can we learn from studying replay in humans?
Noninvasive methods are making it possible to study neural replay in humans. Although focused on alignment with rodent findings, human research often …
authors.elsevier.com
A fundamental study of individual variation and contribution of learning to behavioural individuality. Conclusions are supported by compelling, rigorous analysis across a number of experiments in thousands of individuals across genotypes and conditions.
Learning is a fundamental source of individuality
Altmetric provides a collated score for online attention across various platforms and media.See more details
buff.ly
Fun "fact" I've been trying to estimate for a course on brains and neural nets: the human brain eliminates/re-creates somewhere between 1 - 170 million synapses per second, totaling to a mind-boggling 2 to 380 quadrillion changes over a lifetime. More on my guess below. Curious to hear feedback!
🧠 New preprint! How well can current algorithms *actually* detect neural "replay" in the human brain under absolutely optimal conditions? We built FASTIMAGES: A combined MEG + fMRI benchmark with KNOWN neural sequences, so replay-detection methods can finally be validated against a ground truth.
FASTIMAGES: Validating replay detection methods in human neuroimaging
A combined MEG + fMRI benchmark dataset with known neural sequences to validate replay detection methods (TDLM and SODA).
cimh-clinical-psychology.github.io
do any non-human animals have the “lying awake at 3am because the brain won’t stop” type of insomnia? Or is rumination-insomnia uniquely human? How would we even study it? thanks for any tips!
Interested in human replay and solid methods? Jointly with @skjerns.de we're releasing a benchmark dataset with known ground-truth neural sequences in MEG & fMRI, for developing & validating replay methods. First test: existing methods show similar effect sizes, but room to improve shorturl.at/6TgIr
FASTIMAGES: Validating replay detection methods in human neuroimaging using a combined MEG and fMRI dataset
Studies in rodents and humans using invasive electrophysiology have established that neural replay is a ubiquitous phenomenon in the brain that is associated with a wide range of cognitive functions, ...
shorturl.at
How fast agentic AI has changed our work is head-spinning and there's been a lot of debate in our lab. So we drafted guidelines to help navigate this new reality. Sharing here in the hope it’s useful for others & curious to hear thoughts schucklab.gitlab.io/ai-policy.html #AcademicSky #compneurosky
Schuck Lab — AI Policy
Schuck Lab policy on generative and agentic AI
schucklab.gitlab.io
Neuromatch has been denied our Office of Foreign Assets Control "Iran license" renewal. We had renewed successfully before, but now our request is “inconsistent with current U.S. foreign policy.” I am absolutely gutted by this denial.
Neuromatch@neuromatch.bsky.social · 4mo agoWe have difficult news to share. Neuromatch's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) license renewal, which has allowed us to include participants residing in Iran since 2020, has been denied by the United States Government.
Happy to share this wonderful work spearheaded by Luianta about the viscous cycle between avoiding something and believing it is bad for you. See preprint belo and also check out the link to the cute dog island task.
Luianta Verra@luiantaverra.bsky.social · 4mo agoNew preprint! How do threat beliefs drive avoidance & what happens when avoidance prevents us from verifying them? New work showing a bidirectional link between beliefs and avoidance! Lucky to work w @ondrejzika.bsky.social @nicoschuck.bsky.social @tobywise.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/ps...
trying to play peekaboo with my child but he’s reviewer 2: me: where’d daddy go? baby: the disappearance is interesting but I am not convinced it is technically sound me: peekaboo! baby: while the reappearance is technically sound, the novelty over prior work remains unclear
Joel@snufkinlib.bsky.social · 4mo agotrying to play peekaboo with my child but he's a European diplomat: me: where'd daddy go? baby: we must articulate a post-daddy vision of strategic autonomy me: peekaboo! baby: my historic relationship with my father is stable despite recent troubles
🚨 Permanent position! theadaptivemind-excellencecluster.de is looking for a managing director of our new outreach hub. This is an unlimited time position at an E13 paygrade (~postdoc level) Apply by May 31st 👉 www.career.tu-darmstadt.de/tu-darmstadt... Please share widely 🙏
career.tu-darmstadt.de
this is welcome news! funding decision are too noisy to make them so consequential, especially in a system already under so much strain. i hope there’ll be a different way to adapt to the increase in applications.
European Research Council (ERC)@erc.europa.eu · 4mo agoNEWS: The ERC Scientific Council has listened to the concerns from members of the research community about changes to the re-submission rules, intended to manage the surge in demand for grants. The Scientific Council will readjust some of the changes: link.europa.eu/TBqRQJ
I do this all the time. With recent grants, sometimes old grants. With papers. With talks that I think went well. I don't think it's time wasted. It's about learning what good looks like, and reminding yourself that sometimes you can be good. 2 of the most important things for an academic.
Aidan Horner@aidanhorner.bsky.social · 4mo agoDoes anyone else waste time at work occasionally re-reading bits of a submitted (but not yet reviewed) grant? I can't seem to help myself, despite knowing it is completely pointless
I wish my inbox summary would stop insisting that "some children in your son's daycare have lice" is my most important email today
We’ve got an exciting new thing to share! We have causal evidence (using TMR) that memory reactivation during sleep promotes abstract understanding of underlying structure, allowing transfer learning in a new domain with zero superficial feature overlap with the learned one.
Sarah Solomon@sarahsolomon.bsky.social · 4mo agoSuper excited to share this preprint! How do we disentangle underlying structure from the particular features of a learning episode to benefit future learning? We find that memory reactivation during sleep promotes this structure abstraction process. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
important work from @skjerns.de !
Simon Kern@skjerns.de · 4mo agoCan we really measure replay in humans using MEG with current methods? In our most recent paper we simulated replay under realistic conditions via a novel hybrid approach with astonishing results. we're delighted that it has now been published @elife.bsky.social! elifesciences.org/articles/108...
The Causality in Cognition Lab -- a supportive, bluesky-colored team -- is looking for a predoc to join us! Here are infos about the lab (cicl.stanford.edu) and the position (careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/iriss-p...). The application deadline is May 1st. Please share, thank you 🙏
Some reports say over 500 schools, 55 libraries, & 25 universities hit. You can debate the numbers, but hitting Sharif University & Beheshti is like hitting MIT & Stanford. I keep wondering: How would the scientific community respond differently if it was those universities? What’s the difference?
fully agree with Stefano. I spent years of my training learning to translate scientific thinking into models and code. if that’s no longer a bottleneck, what was the point — and what should replace it?
Stefano Palminteri@stepalminteri.bsky.social · 5mo ago🧵 I gave Claude two things: a short paper (doi.org/10.1073/pnas...) and a raw behavioural dataset with 3 lines of variable descriptions. Then I asked it to fit three computational RL models described only by equations in the manuscript. No code, no toolbox, no guidance on the fitting procedure. 1/3
The Memory Disorders Research Society (www.memorydisorders.org) is now seeking nominations for new members! Self-nominations are welcome. Application is open until April 15 @ 11:59pm PT. Reach out if you have questions about the society or its (amazing) annual meeting! forms.gle/Qn7mchoPpaqL...
MDRS
MDRS is a professional society dedicated to the study of memory. Members engage in basic and clinical research into how memory works and why it fails.
memorydisorders.org
