Another super piece by @philipcball.bsky.social! This one on the enduring impact of "Waddington's landscape"! www.quantamagazine.org/how-does-lif...

How Does Life Unfold? A Landscape Metaphor Comes Into Its Own. | Quanta Magazine

C.H. Waddington’s powerful image of embryonic stem cells specializing on a rolling landscape has captivated biologists since the 1950s. Experimental data is finally confirming, and complicating, his v...

quantamagazine.org

New assistant professorship in predictive brain processes 🔮🧠💻 at the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Maastricht University. It’s a fantastic place to work and we have a vibrant interdisciplinary community. vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/job/Maastric...

Applications are open for the #LakeConference on Modeling Life from Cells to Tissues – co-hosted with Circuit Neuroscience Basel. 📆 March 21-25, 2027 📍 Seattle, USA 🧠 All career stages welcomed. Apply to attend by December 10: https://lakeconferences.org/conf/8334d9bf-9bbd-488a-8ffc-2232ac1a3545

Deadline for this is tomorrow!! 🏃‍♀️

Tim Kietzmann @timkietzmann.bsky.social · 2w ago

Friendly reminder: we are looking to hire a Full Professor in the field of "Intelligence in Biological and Artificial Intelligence" at the IKW. Topic wise, the position is fairly open: www.uni-osnabrueck.de/en/universit... Deadline coming up on the 6th of October.

“I’m not saying all safety regulations are bad. I’m saying that I would personally mouth-pipette a solution of pure chloroform right now, today, in front of God & the NIH Director and the entire Office of Research Safety, if it meant a young scientist in my department could get a payline above 20%.”

Dr. Cate Peña@cate-cholamine.bsky.social · last wk.

This is the best Substack I’ve ever read open.substack.com/pub/inprepar...

TIL the American Red Cross was so serious about the “only voluntary blood donations” thing, they didn’t allow patients who had to frequently have their blood removed for medical reasons to donate it. Because those patients profited from having their blood removed.

This is a big deal. In the coming days, a huge pulse of ocean energy from El Niño is set to reach San Diego and move north. It will raise sea levels here by half a foot or more, and they could stay high for months. It comes just as our tides hit their peak and storm season picks up.

Looking for a postdoc in comp neuro and human brain imaging? Interested in foraging? Join our international collaboration with Jon Rubin, @jyotikab.bsky.social, & @davidrobbe.bsky.social be.bsky.social to study the neural basis of foraging behavior! cmu.wd115.myworkdayjobs.com/CMU/job/Pitt...

Postdoctoral Research Associate – Cognitive Axon Lab – Dietrich College

The Cognitive Axon Lab, in the Department of Psychology and Carnegie Mellon Neuroscience Institute, seeks applications for a multi-year Postdoctoral Research Associate at Carnegie Mellon University. T...

cmu.wd115.myworkdayjobs.com

What does adaptation do to globally coupled networks? In our newest preprint, we developed a mean-field theory that predicts when adaptation turns homogeneous connectivity into heterogeneous network structure, and when it doesn't: arxiv.org/abs/2609.22597

Deviations from global coupling in adaptive oscillator networks: a mean-field theory for the variance of coupling weights

A wide range of physical and biological systems are adaptive networks, in which the dynamics of the nodes and of the edges connecting them co-evolve. Mean-field reductions of such systems typically tr...

arxiv.org

Preprint time! This is a cool one. Complex systems, be they neural nets, interacting genes, or power grids, can produce diverse dynamics-- things like point attractors, limit cycles, and chaos. The dynamic landscape you get depends on how elements interact. But those interactions can also change!

📜 Out now: ‘Towards a genetics of mental disorders as complex dynamical systems’ After 2 years of work with @michelnivard.bsky.social & @ludvigdb.bsky.social We outline a roadmap to align behavioural genetics with novel dynamic theories of mental disorders A thread 🧵 doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Happy to share the version of record of our locus coeruleus paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Prior thread on some of our discoveries in this study: bsky.app/profile/jere...

Topographic structure and function of locus coeruleus noradrenaline neurons - Nature

Dorsal and ventral noradrenergic neurons in the locus coeruleus form topographic subpopulations whose projection patterns and activity encode choice switching, reward-prediction errors and disregard o...

nature.com

Jeremiah Cohen@jeremiahycohen.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Delighted to share our discoveries about one of the brain's neurotransmitter systems: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Together with colleagues at the @alleninstitute.org, we have learned a lot about a tiny cluster of neurons in the brainstem locus coeruleus (LC) that releases norepinephrine (NE). 1

1/6 An extraordinary @nature.com paper has just landed from the lab of @sergiuppasca.bsky.social. They found a way to create "xenocortical mice" which have ~92% of their cortex occupied by a cortical organoid derived from human stem cells.

I resigned from ExxonMobil today. I spent the last three years doing fossil fuel extraction research at both BP and ExxonMobil. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing to maximize extraction while the window to act closes, and gambling with our lives. More below.

An acortical mouse — born without hippocampus and most of its neocortex — learns the Manhattan Maze: a 30× improvement in 5 hours, 18 rewards! Now a question for everyone: How can an acortical brain do this? Leave a comment! Preprint w/ @mameister4.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New preprint on our favorite theme: same connectome + different neurons = different dynamics. @shtakasu.bsky.social looked at detail balance (E+I inputs sum to 0) in RNNs w/different activation functions, finding that it stabilized some networks and destabilized others. arxiv.org/html/2608.30...

‼️Come join our team at the IKW as a full professor! ‼️ I moved here last year and couldn't be happier - supportive colleagues, incredibly curious students, and lots of exciting developments at the intersection of natural and artificial intelligence. ✨ Any questions: contact Tim or me

Tim Kietzmann @timkietzmann.bsky.social · 2mo ago

📢 We are hiring a full professor in "Intelligence in Biological and Artificial Systems". Come join us at Germany's first and largest cognitive science program. Please share far and wide, and get in touch with any questions. www.uni-osnabrueck.de/en/universit...

Bordeaux, France, has now recorded more days above 40°C in 2026 alone than during the entire 105-year period from 1920 (when observations began) to 2025. This is deeply shocking.

New preprint led by @rgast.bsky.social- part 1 of Richard's ongoing effort to make a better firing rate model: developing mean-field models that can be fit to biological data to capture both the dynamics of neural populations and the underlying physiological heterogeneity that sculpt those dynamics.

Richard Gast@rgast.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The Ott-Antonsen ansatz revolutionized our understanding of coupled oscillator systems with heterogeneous oscillators. We developed a multi-ensemble method that increases the applicability of the OA ansatz to empirical data substantially arxiv.org/abs/2607.09516, as we demonstrate on neural data.

Happy Monday! Come learn how jellyfish swim. In a review led by fluid dynamics maestro Alex Hoover, we outline how neuromechanical modeling will help us understand how modulation of neural activity allows jellyfish to jet and pirouette through fluids www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The Ott-Antonsen ansatz revolutionized our understanding of coupled oscillator systems with heterogeneous oscillators. We developed a multi-ensemble method that increases the applicability of the OA ansatz to empirical data substantially arxiv.org/abs/2607.09516, as we demonstrate on neural data.

A multi-ensemble mean-field reduction method for networks of globally coupled phase oscillators with arbitrary parameter distributions

Understanding the dynamical properties of coupled phase oscillator systems with heterogeneous oscillator frequencies has been a long-standing challenge of complex systems theory. While the seminal wor...

arxiv.org

🌡️Could the current #ElNiño become the strongest in at least 150 years? #2027 could become the hottest year on record with major consequences for #Biodiversity. A timely reminder that ecosystem management must prepare for climate extremes—not just long-term trends. 🧪🌍🌐 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This El Niño is set to be the largest on record by a ‘mind-blowing margin’

Forecasters predict that the monster climate pattern will combine with global warming to push global temperatures in 2027 to new heights.

nature.com

🎉 Please join us in welcoming Dr. Richard Roth to UHN’s @krembilresearch! Dr. Roth joins us as a Scientist, focusing on the interplay between synaptic plasticity and neural circuit adaptation, and how these processes shape motor learning.    🔗 Learn more about his research: www.motor-plasticity.org

Unbelievable thuggery. No other good team in FIFA does this stuff, as often or at this scale. It's not even close. You think you've seen it all with Mexico and CONCACAF, but it's not even in the same ballpark.

Sophie E. Hill@sophieehill.bsky.social · 3mo ago

jesus christ paredes. 5,000 match ban at least.

Look at them. Absolute nonsense. Give them all cards. Send them all off.

Mark Copelovitch@mcopelov.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The Argentina behavior on every foul - encircling the ref & yelling at him - is illegal & no other team does it as comprehensively & often as they do, & it should not be tolerated.

Heading to Halifax for the @cnsorg.bsky.social meeting? Make sure to plan to attend the workshop organized by @rgast.bsky.social and myself on "Neuronal heterogeneity’s role in network dynamics and computation." The (hopefully) final schedule is linked below! richlab.pnb.uconn.edu/cns2026/

Going to be in Nova Scotia for #CNS2026? Make sure you swing by the workshop I've organized with @rgast.bsky.social entitled "Neuronal heterogeneity's role in network dynamics and computation." The preliminary schedule and talk abstracts are now available! richlab.pnb.uconn.edu/cns2026/

This Danville, VA city council candidate made a very dramatic video about sidewalks and public safety, and I love it and him. Worrying about a possible milkshake duck situation, I looked at his FB page, but he seems ok. Juneteenth celebrations, community outreach, Methodists. A solid old gent.

Braitenberg Vehicle day with Hugo Marques at QABVR: wire light, touch, and distance sensors to a pair of motors, then tune the sensor gains and motor outputs to play follow the leader

What is the minimal machinery needed for complex, cognition-like behavior? With @lostintheswarm.bsky.social, we show how self-sustained calcium oscillations, diffusion, and mechanics may be enough to coordinate behavior across a single cell with no nervous system. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/