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.

We are excited! @initself.bsky.social & @rowansommers.bsky.social will present their **Umwelt Representation Hypothesis** at our next meeting. Sep 18, 11 am (CET) [Hybrid] Find the link to the online meeting here: www.cbs.mpg.de/en/cbs-coconut or join us at MPI CBS #neuroai #neuroskyence #ai

CBS CoCoNUT

CBS CoCoNUT: A new interest group that comes together every two weeks to have an informal exchange about cognitive computational neuroscience.

cbs.mpg.de

Victoria Bosch@initself.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Are brains and artificial neural networks converging onto universal representations? There is a seductive idea making the rounds in NeuroAI / machine learning: train systems well enough, and they all converge on the same representation of reality (i.e. a unique world model). We have thoughts™ 1/n

Important update: we just extended the application deadline to the 6th of October 2026. www.uni-osnabrueck.de/en/universit...

Everything is ready for the third iteration of NEAT (Neuro-AI-Talks), starting tomorrow. New location, new workshop formats to explore.. I'll keep you posted! For the ~100 people making on their way towards Osnabrück: we are looking forward to having you over! #NEAT2026

Yeah sure, I'll let your AI agents have access to my password manager - what could possibly go wrong...

Quick reminder that we are looking to fill a (tenured) full professor role in "Intelligence in Biological and Artificial Systems".

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...

Thank you for having me. Great event and an inspiring initiative!

Laura Dugué@lauradugue.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The french network on computational neuroscience, #RTNeuroComp, had its first conference today! 2 great keynotes by Nancy Kopell & @timkietzmann.bsky.social. 4 round tables to discuss the current research challenges in computational neuroscience and the contour of the discipline + many posters.

Check out our new TICS article! We present an alternative take on the widely observed alignment between various AI models and human brain representations: the Umwelt Representation Hypothesis.

Victoria Bosch@initself.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Are brains and artificial neural networks converging onto universal representations? There is a seductive idea making the rounds in NeuroAI / machine learning: train systems well enough, and they all converge on the same representation of reality (i.e. a unique world model). We have thoughts™ 1/n

How can we design experiments that make computational models disagree? One section of our new @natrevneuro.nature.com Review with @kriegeskorte.bsky.social and @heikoschuett.bsky.social examines studies that used stimulus sets designed to elicit distinct predictions from competing models. 1/16

We are hiring a full professor for "Intelligence in biological and artificial systems". If you don't know about the German system yet, let me tell you a little bit about working as a professor at the institute. Thread 👇

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...

📢 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...

Excited to share our new paper: "Probing the content of semantic representations in body-selective regions" We propose a framework based on object co-occurrence to interpret semantic representations of natural scenes predicted by LLM embeddings. doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

Probing the content of semantic representations in body-selective regions

Abstract. Recent advances in neural networks trained on natural language have revealed that category-selective regions encode complex semantics and contextual information of natural scenes in addition...

doi.org

Happy to be serving as editor for MMB. Excited about what is to come.

Minds, Machines, and Brains (MMB)@mmb-journal.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Hello world! 👋 We’re Minds, Machines, and Brains (MMB) 👤🤖🧠 a new open access journal from @mitpress.bsky.social exploring the principles of intelligence and cognition across natural and artificial minds. Submissions open this Fall! 🔗 direct.mit.edu/mmb

Excited to share that our paper has been accepted for a talk at #CogSci2026: Path Integration and Object-Location Binding Emerge in an Action-Conditioned Predictive Sequence Network Linda Ariel Ventura, Victoria Bosch, Tim C. Kietzmann, and Sushrut Thorat. Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2602.03490. ⛓️

Path Integration and Object-Location Binding Emerge in an Action-Conditioned Predictive Sequence Network

Adaptive cognition requires structured internal models of objects and their relations. Predictive neural networks are often proposed to learn such world models, but how these are instantiated and how ...

arxiv.org

NEAT (Neuro-AI-Talks) is fully booked! We are happy for the great interest and are looking forward to welcoming you all to Osnabrück in September!

Tim Kietzmann @timkietzmann.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Happy to announce the 3rd iteration of NEAT (Neuro-AI-Talks), which will take place in Osnabrück September 14th-15th 2026. NEAT is a (deliberately small scale) NeuroAI workshop that brings together researchers from neuroscience and AI. www.kietzmannlab.org/neat2026/ More information below 👇

Packed room for the second talk of the MIND (machine intelligence, neuroscience discovery) lecture series in Osnabrück. Excited to hear from @dirkwulff.bsky.social !

Ever wondered why we fixate some locations longer than others? We initially thought that it had to do with recognition complexity, and were quite wrong. In Nature Neuroscience we present an alternative take: the need to memorise governs fixation durations.

Philip Sulewski@psulewski.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Now out in Nature Neuroscience: "Fixation duration on natural scenes is explained by memory encoding not processing demand". www.nature.com/articles/s41... Our eyes don't linger because recognition is hard; they linger to remember. Let me take you on a quick tour. 🧵

Now out in Nature Neuroscience: "Fixation duration on natural scenes is explained by memory encoding not processing demand". www.nature.com/articles/s41... Our eyes don't linger because recognition is hard; they linger to remember. Let me take you on a quick tour. 🧵

Fixation duration on natural scenes is explained by memory encoding not processing demand - Nature Neuroscience

By combining magnetoencephalography and eye tracking, this study sheds light on why people fixate on some parts of natural scenes longer than others. Rather than visual complexity, fixation durations ...

nature.com

Our NeuroAI study made it onto the cover of Nature Machine Intelligence ❤️. In it, we demonstrate that a developmentally-inspired visual diet can drastically improve the robustness of ANN-based vision systems. www.nature.com/articles/s42... open access, open code, open weights, open science.

This paper changed my mind on how visual processing works in the brain. We knew it was dynamic given all the recurrent connections. But I thought it would converge to a fixpoint during a fixation. Not so, it seems ... The dynamic captures different aspects of the stimulus at different times. Nice.

Tim Kietzmann @timkietzmann.bsky.social · 6mo ago

A huge effort and a new take on what constitutes the "feedforward pass" across the visual system. Make sure to check out our new preprint:

Looking for robust AI vision? Then this NeuroAI paper may be for you 👇 Open access, open code, open weights.

Zejin Lu@zejinlu.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Now out in Nature Machine Intelligence @NatMachIntell “Adopting a human developmental visual diet yields robust and shape-based AI vision”: doi.org/10.1038/s422.... A wonderful case where brain inspiration improved AI. With @martisamuser.bsky.social, Radek Cichy and @timkietzmann.bsky.social .

A huge effort and a new take on what constitutes the "feedforward pass" across the visual system. Make sure to check out our new preprint:

Daniel Anthes@anthesdaniel.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Excited about our new preprint: “The illusory simplicity of the feedforward pass: evidence for the dynamical nature of stimulus encoding along the primate ventral stream” arxiv.org/abs/2604.12825 Work with Sushrut Thorat, Anna Mitola, Paolo Papale, Peter König & Tim Kietzmann 🧵 thread below

A huge effort and a new take on what constitutes the "feedforward pass" across the visual system. Make sure to check out our new preprint:

Daniel Anthes@anthesdaniel.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Excited about our new preprint: “The illusory simplicity of the feedforward pass: evidence for the dynamical nature of stimulus encoding along the primate ventral stream” arxiv.org/abs/2604.12825 Work with Sushrut Thorat, Anna Mitola, Paolo Papale, Peter König & Tim Kietzmann 🧵 thread below

We wrote a book! www.cambridge.org/core/books/s... Consciousness science is a fascinating but bewildering field: many competing theories, little consensus, and big open questions. If you are looking for an accessible guide through this complex landscape, this book is for you.

Scientific Theories of Consciousness

Cambridge Core - Neurosciences - Scientific Theories of Consciousness

cambridge.org

Highly recommended: I really enjoyed NEAT, every time I attended. Great opportunity to catch up on #NeuroAI, especially for those who can't make it to CCN!

Tim Kietzmann @timkietzmann.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Happy to announce the 3rd iteration of NEAT (Neuro-AI-Talks), which will take place in Osnabrück September 14th-15th 2026. NEAT is a (deliberately small scale) NeuroAI workshop that brings together researchers from neuroscience and AI. www.kietzmannlab.org/neat2026/ More information below 👇

Happy to announce the 3rd iteration of NEAT (Neuro-AI-Talks), which will take place in Osnabrück September 14th-15th 2026. NEAT is a (deliberately small scale) NeuroAI workshop that brings together researchers from neuroscience and AI. www.kietzmannlab.org/neat2026/ More information below 👇

NEAT 2026

kietzmannlab.org

📢 PhD position in the NeuroAI of Language Why can LLMs predict brain activity so well? We're hiring a PhD student to find out -- AI interpretability meets neuroimaging Deadline March 20 Please RT 🙏 👇 mpi.nl/career-education/vacancies/vacancy/fully-funded-4-year-phd-position-neuroai-language

📢 PhD position in Developmental Language Modelling (PLZ RT) What can human language acquisition teach us about training language models? Join us as a PhD! mpi.nl/career-education/vacancies/vacancy/fully-funded-4-year-phd-position-developmental-language @carorowland.bsky.social @mpi-nl.bsky.social

What a milestone 🤯. The institute of cognitive science in Osnabrück, the first of its kind in Germany, is now home to more than 1,000 cognitive science students across our programs. Wild.

What happens if you hook up an energy-efficiency optimising RNN on active vision input? It learns predictive remapping and path integration into allocentric scene coordinates. Now out in patterns: www.cell.com/patterns/ful...

Predictive remapping and allocentric coding as consequences of energy efficiency in recurrent neural network models of active vision

This study gives an example of how complex computations in neural networks can emerge from simple physical principles. Training a model to optimize internal energy efficiency while performing eye move...

cell.com

Tim Kietzmann @timkietzmann.bsky.social · last yr.

Can seemingly complex multi-area computations in the brain emerge from the need for energy efficient computation? In our new preprint on predictive remapping in active vision, we report on such a case. Let us take you for a spin. 1/6 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...