Kenji Lee

@kenjilee.bsky.social

Ph.D. student studying the in vivo identification of cell types and the neural dynamics of decision making in prefrontal cortex. Chand Lab @ BU; NINDS F31 Fellow; prev. UW, Allen Inst., and U. Puget Sound. From Hawaii 🌴

If there are any PhD hopefuls on here, I wanted to share a few thoughts on your timeline for the upcoming admissions cycle, with apps due starting mid-November. What should you be doing right now? ✔️ Generating a list of schools ✔️ Reaching out to possible recommenders 🧵!

Our paper "Redundant prefrontal hemispheres adapt storage strategy to working memory demands" is finally out in Nature Communications! We combined bilateral PFC recordings, modeling and human data to ask: How do the hemispheres work together to store information?1/n www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Redundant prefrontal hemispheres adapt storage strategy to working memory demands - Nature Communications

Neural mechanisms underlying spatial working memory are not fully understood. In this manuscript, simultaneous bilateral monkey recordings and attractor networks show how weakly coupled, redundant pre...

nature.com

Looking for a postdoc in motor control / systems neuroscience? I'm seeking candidates to develop a Connected Minds Fellowship proposal with me at York University: $70K/yr for 2 years + benefits, plus an $8.5K/yr research allowance. Deadline: Sept 27, 2026. 🧵

Yale Neuroscience is hiring another computational neuroscience position this year! Please share with anyone who might be interested, and feel free to reach out if you have any questions about the position, or growing neuro-AI community at Yale/WTI!

Yale Neuroscience@yaleneuro.bsky.social · 3w ago

The Department of Neuroscience at Yale is hiring faculty members. We have 2 searches: one general (deadline Oct 15), one focused on computational neuroscience (deadline Nov 30). Apply! apply.interfolio.com/190736 & apply.interfolio.com/190740

Harvard Neurobiology + Kempner are hiring a tenure-track Assistant Professor in computational neuroscience. The search is broad; researchers combining computational and experimental work (including nonhuman-primate research) should apply! academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/16615

Assistant Professor of Neurobiology

The Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University invite applications for a tenure tra...

academicpositions.harvard.edu

Go David!!! Cannot recommend more highly!!! My biggest regret is not paying more attention in math classes if only for the opportunity to work with you!

David G. Clark@david-g-clark.bsky.social · last mo.

This September, I will join the @flatironinstitute.org Center for Computational Neuroscience as a Group Leader, where I will launch the High-Dimensional Dynamics & Computation Group. Information for postdocs and grad students is forthcoming. I am grateful to my mentors who made this possible!

Exterior view of the Flatiron Institute in Manhattan

📣New paper! How does the sleeping brain help us to integrate new experiences while managing memories from the past? For his PhD work, @sabbaspoor.bsky.social recorded hippocampal ensembles in freely moving monkeys and found something unexpected. 🧵1/n www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪🧠📈👩‍🔬#OpenAccess

Experience reorganizes content-specific memory traces in macaques - Nature Neuroscience

In macaques, old memories, relative to new ones, are supported by more stable and interconnected cell assemblies. New-biased and old-biased assemblies reactivate during overnight sleep and can sometim...

nature.com

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

Every day, our brains arbitrate between competing memories and motivations. This ability allows us to flexibly adapt our behavior as the world around us changes. But how does the brain actually do it? Our new study sheds light on this! www.cell.com/current-biol...

The prelimbic cortex arbitrates memory-guided conflict resolution

Caban-Murillo et al. show that, during approach-avoidance conflict, prelimbic cortex ensembles are recruited to represent reward and punishment through distinct network patterns. Both ensembles are ne...

cell.com

Adding to all the takes on this, something that is missed and why I don't think AI will progress beyond research assistant in neuroscience is so much of the work is embodied. Not just in that "an LLM doesn't have a body" but so much of the knowledge is only gained through embodiment.

Mark D Humphries@markdhumphries.bsky.social · 2mo ago

At Cosyne, Chris Olah from Anthropic told us that neuroscientists had “3-4 years left to make a contribution” Why was not clear. Perhaps he was hinting at the below graph accompanying today’s Claude Science launch. Apparently we’ll all be obsolete soon.

Very excited for our new paper, now out in @cellcellpress.bsky.social! /🧵 The protein Tau forms intracellular toxic tangles in neurons in Alzheimer’s disease and Tauopathies. Tau pathology slowly spreads from cell-to-cell but the mechanisms are not clear /1 authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Arc mediates intercellular tau transmission via extracellular vesicles

Tau pathology spreads cell to cell, but the mechanisms of intercellular tau transmission remain unclear. We find that the neuronal gene Arc is critica…

authors.elsevier.com

If you're interested in doing theory work in New York, I will be recruiting for multiple graduate student and postdoctoral positions; please get in touch if interested (at jzavatoneveth@rockefeller.edu), and stay tuned for an official posting.

Tremendously excited to announce that I will be joining @rockefeller.edu as an Assistant Professor and Head of Lab starting in January 2027! My group will be broadly focused on theoretical neuroscience, and mathematical problems in neural computation in the large.

Rockefeller campus image from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rockefeller_University_Campus_aerial_2.jpg, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

My friend's NSF CAREER received the highest possible score (Excellent, Excellent, Excellent: High Priority) and it was rejected today. This would have been my friend's first extramural award, 5 years after starting their lab, exactly when grant $ is make or break for an Assistant Professor's career.

Jeffrey Mervis@policyhound.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Been wondering why NSF isn't spending most of its FY26 appropriation? A $1.5B tech initiative may be the reason. And big cuts to hundreds of research programs could be just the beginning of the bad news. www.science.org/content/arti...