Errors or Adaptations? A Critical Review of Predictive Processing in Psychiatry pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42510237/ Hmmm...
Andrej Bicanski
@andrejbicanski.bsky.social
Research group leader at MPI_CBS. Physicist turned neuroscientist (interests: too many, but mainly spatial cognition), sporadically on X/BSky.
Why is reading so fundamental to the human mind? In this fascinating paper, @standehaene.bsky.social & Co show how literacy reshapes and connects the brain’s visual and language systems. A timely reminder of what education could lose if LLMs replace reading & writing. www.unicog.org/publications...
Postdoc position on Perirhinal Cortex function in Leipzig!
Doeller Lab@doellerlab.bsky.social · 3w agoJoin us at @mpicbs.bsky.social as a fully funded 4-year PostDoc (m/f/d) in Cognitive & Computational Neuroscience (Area: Functions of the Perirhinal Cortex). Excellent infrastructure with a leading scientific network. Apply by 17 August: recruitingapp-5218.de.umantis.com/Vacancies/44...?
Join us at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig as a fully funded 4-year postdoc position (m/f/d) in Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience (Area: Social Cognition). Excellent infrastructure with a leading scientific network. Apply by 13 July: recruitingapp-5218.de.umantis.com/Vacancies/44...?
Really excited about this work with the awesome Will de Cothi & @shipleysj.bsky.social, out in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. We propose acetylcholine is an analogue of dopamine — tracking not reward prediction errors but state-transition prediction errors. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-026-01058-w
New paper out in Current Biology. We define thalamic head direction (HD) cells based on the combination of neurochemical identity, physiology, sensorimotor responses, and connectivity, suggesting cell types. Great work led by Sara Hijazi and Shan Jiang from the lab. www.cell.com/current-biol...
Diversity and sensorimotor specialization of head direction cells in the mouse thalamus
Hijazi and Jiang et al. identify distinct head direction (HD) cell subpopulations in the mouse anterodorsal thalamic nucleus, based on the combination of firing patterns, connectivity, and neurochemic...
cell.com
Ever wonder how your brain navigates the real world? 🧠 Most spatial navigation studies use flat, 2D mazes. But the real world is hilly, irregular, and bumpy! ⛰️ Our new paper in #ScienceAdvances asked a simple question: How does the brain map uneven terrain? 📄 doi.org/10.1126/scia... 🧵👇️️️ 1/
Great postdoc opportunity.
Doeller Lab@doellerlab.bsky.social · 2mo agoJoin us at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig as a fully funded 4-year postdoc position (m/f/d) in Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience (Area: Social Cognition). Excellent infrastructure with a leading scientific network. Apply by 13 July: recruitingapp-5218.de.umantis.com/Vacancies/44...?
🧠 Next Mind Meeting Talk! Jennifer Li and Drew Robson from the RoLi Lab at @mpicybernetics.bsky.social will give a talk titled: Uncovering the neural mechanisms of spatial cognition with behavior-aware autonomous microscopes.
Doeller Lab@doellerlab.bsky.social · 6mo ago🧠 The Mind Meeting Series is back! Organized by us & Bicanski Lab, featuring leading scientists in cognitive and computational neuroscience. Our first speaker is @lukaskunz.bsky.social (University Hospital Bonn). 🗓 February 12 | 3:00 PM 📍 In person (Zoom available) We look forward to seeing you!
Been thinking about this topic for a while but never seen it expressed this well. Thank you @tonyzador.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/machine-lear...
Can AI do neuroscience without understanding?
Prediction without understanding sustained astronomy through a thousand years of epicycles. Artificial intelligence is now offering neuroscience the same deal.
thetransmitter.org
Job alert! We are seeking a rodent in vivo electrophysiologist to work on coordination between anterior thalamus and hippocampus in rats using Neuropixels. Beautiful Scotland, leading university (Glasgow) and vibrant intellectual setting. Post is 23 months but hopefully extensible. Details here 👇
Can 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...
TDLM-Resting-State Simulation
How sensitive is TDLM really? Can we actually find replay when we know it is present?
cimh-clinical-psychology.github.io
New paper from the Neural Computation Group: "A theory of subicular function and generalized vector coding." by @ffeiwang.bsky.social. Link to preprint and a quick overview in Fei's short thread.
Fei Wang@ffeiwang.bsky.social · 4mo ago1/N: Dear colleagues, I would like to share a new paper on the subiculum, part of my PhD with the Neural Computation Group @andrejbicanski.bsky.social @mpicbs.bsky.social . We present “A theory of subicular function and generalized vector coding” that we call Disco. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
New book on navigation (open access). The result of the Ernst Strüngemann Forum 2024. Was great to be there and discuss for a week with 50+ wonderful colleagues. Many thanks to the organizers, Julia Lupp + ESF team, the editors @noranewcombe.bsky.social, Ken Cheng link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Challenges in Navigation Research
This open access book explores navigation across species using a multidisciplinary approach to address challenges in research and clinical applications.
link.springer.com
Wait… localized norepinephrine transients in the awake visual cortex?! Who would have guessed this neuromodulatory signal is that spatially precise, right where visual processing is happening. Brain state control just got a lot more local. @ruedigersarah.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
"The digital sphinx produces highly realistic fly walking - yet it is biologically meaningless. This exercise teaches us nothing about either animal and exposes a core peril of connectome-body models: behavioral fidelity is achievable without biological fidelity..." www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
The digital sphinx: Can a worm brain control a fly body?
Animal intelligence is not purely a product of abstract computation in the brain, but emerges from dynamic interactions between the nervous system and the body. New connectome datasets and musculoskeletal models now enable integrated, closed-loop simulations of the neural and biomechanical systems of the fruit fly Drosophila, an ideal model organism to investigate embodied intelligence. However, many biological parameters of the nervous system and the body, as well as how they interface, remain unknown. To fill such gaps, researchers are turning to deep reinforcement learning (DRL), a data-driven optimization framework, to create virtual animals that imitate the behavior of real animals. Here, we provide a cautionary tale about the interpretation of such models. We constructed a virtual chimera of two phylogenetically distant species: a connectome of the C. elegans nematode worm and a biomechanical model of the fly body. The worm connectome receives sensory information from the fly body, and an artificial neural network is trained with DRL to map worm motor neuron activations to the fly's leg actuators. The resulting digital sphinx produces highly realistic fly walking - yet it is biologically meaningless. This exercise teaches us nothing about either animal and exposes a core peril of connectome-body models: behavioral fidelity is achievable without biological fidelity, making such models easy to overinterpret. Done carefully, virtual animals can be powerful partners to biological experiments, but only if their components and interfaces are grounded in biology. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. NIH, U01NS136507, R01NS14543
biorxiv.org
1/7 🧠 My journey into development begins with this work and question: how does the brain's spatial navigation system develop? We found that the neural networks for spatial navigation (tori and rings) are preconfigured and only later anchor gradually to the world with experience! 🧵
Edvard I Moser@edvardmoser.bsky.social · 5mo agoIs spatial navigation innate 🧠? Using #NeuroPixels we show that the #torus 🍩 underlying the #GridCell map exists already on day 10 in rats — before pups open eyes and ears and before they start upright walking. 🧵1:4 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Is spatial navigation innate 🧠? Using #NeuroPixels we show that the #torus 🍩 underlying the #GridCell map exists already on day 10 in rats — before pups open eyes and ears and before they start upright walking. 🧵1:4 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
1/N: Dear cognitive map fans, I’d like to share a model I’ve been working on for a while (clearing backlog :). I show how a vector navigation architecture (VNA) and a “positional inference network” (PIN) can build Universal Cognitive Maps (UCMs) for abstract spaces. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Now out in Hippocampus. Fei Wang‘s model of Trace Vector Cells and intra-subiculum processing, consistent with know effects in CA1. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/CPZPYM...
Dynamic Updating of Cognitive Maps via Traces of Experience in the Subiculum
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onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Human hippocampal theta–gamma coupling coordinates sequential planning during navigation Impressive study from Dan Bush's Lab at UCL: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Great new update on the subiculum circuits!
Non‐Canonical Subiculum Circuit Organization and Function
The subiculum is highly interconnected with the hippocampus, sub-regions of the thalamus, and the entorhinal and retrosplenial cortices. Together, these regions form a distributed network that plays ...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Great to have @lukaskunz.bsky.social with next week! Looking forward to this.
Doeller Lab@doellerlab.bsky.social · 6mo ago🧠 The Mind Meeting Series is back! Organized by us & Bicanski Lab, featuring leading scientists in cognitive and computational neuroscience. Our first speaker is @lukaskunz.bsky.social (University Hospital Bonn). 🗓 February 12 | 3:00 PM 📍 In person (Zoom available) We look forward to seeing you!
Can humans & animals really use internal maps to take shortcuts? Tolman famously said yes - based largely on his Sunburst maze. Our new review & meta-analysis suggests evidence is far weaker than you might think. 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1111/ejn.... @uofgpsychneuro.bsky.social @ejneuroscience.bsky.social
Tolman's Sunburst Maze 80 Years on: A Meta‐Analysis Reveals Poor Replicability and Little Evidence for Shortcutting
In 1946, Tolman et al. reported that rats could take a novel shortcut to a goal after training on an indirect route, supporting the Cognitive Map theory. However, a review of subsequent Sunburst maze...
doi.org
New preprint! Have you ever wondered, what are these fuzzy simplicial sets, the theoretical framework behind e.g. UMAP? Here we show that you may simply see them as marginal distributions over simplicial sets. This provides a generative model for UMAP. (1/2) arxiv.org/abs/2512.03899
Probabilistic Foundations of Fuzzy Simplicial Sets for Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction
Fuzzy simplicial sets have become an object of interest in dimensionality reduction and manifold learning, most prominently through their role in UMAP. However, their definition through tools from alg...
arxiv.org
Our new paper, now published in @natcomms.nature.com , asks a simple question: when two tasks share a common structure, does the brain learn them more efficiently? Surprisingly, this was not the case. Thread below (1/7) rdcu.be/eSwvU
The effects of task similarity during representation learning in brains and neural networks
Nature Communications - Here, the authors show learning tasks with similar structures can initially cause interference and slow down learning, but both the brain and artificial networks gradually...
rdcu.be
Dear colleagues, please check out this paper on aging and the HD system + gracefully degrading, biologically plausible HD attractor networks. Well done Matthieu!
Matthieu Bernard@matthieubernard.bsky.social · 8mo agoExcited to share my first PhD preprint! “How human aging disrupts the head direction network: evidence from VR experiments and mechanistic models” We investigated why our sense of direction becomes less stable as we age. Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/ thread 🧵
I wrote a thing on episodic memory and systems consolidation. I hope you all enjoy it and/or find it interesting. A neural state space for episodic memories www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition 🧪
A neural state space for episodic memories
Episodic memories are highly dynamic and change in nonlinear ways over time. This dynamism is not captured by existing systems consolidation theories …
sciencedirect.com
Foraging in conceptual spaces: hippocampal oscillatory dynamics underlying searching for concepts in memory www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Foraging in conceptual spaces: hippocampal oscillatory dynamics underlying searching for concepts in memory
How does the brain access stored knowledge? It has been proposed that conceptual search engages neurocognitive processes similar to foraging in physical space. We tested this idea using intracranial E...
biorxiv.org