David Barack

@dlbarack.bsky.social

Philosopher and neuroscientist | Studying inquiry and foraging | Conceptual and theoretical foundations of cognition | #T1D

📣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

As promised (and only slightly late 😅): here's a figure-by-figure walk-through of our preprint "Random network structure stabilizes neural manifolds". This one is a bit more for the nerds. For an overview version 👉 bsky.app/profile/j-b-... Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202... 1/8 🧠🧪

Random network structure stabilizes neural manifolds

Neuronal activity patterns change continuously over days and weeks, a phenomenon known as representational drift. Despite this, the geometric structure of population representations, namely the pairwise similarities between stimulus-evoked activity patterns, remains remarkably stable. How can ongoing changes in activity be consistent with stable representational similarity? We show that this is a generic consequence of random connectivity: in networks with random connectivity, output similarity is a monotonically increasing function of input similarity, independent of the specific connectivity pattern. Drift, whether driven by random synaptic turnover or Hebbian plasticity, merely transitions the network between random instantiations, leaving similarity intact. This extends to recurrent architectures and to deep neural networks, where continued training beyond performance saturation produces activity drift while preserving representational similarity. Although connectivity in the brain is not random, networks trained on high-dimensional inputs acquire connectivity that behaves statistically like a random projection, making these results broadly applicable to biological neural circuits. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, PCI2023-145967-2, PID2021-124702OB-I00 Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) – Severo Ochoa and María de Maeztu Program for Centers and Units of Excellence in R&D, CEX2020-001084-M German Research Foundation (DFG), FOR 5368 ARENA

doi.org

Jens-Bastian Eppler@j-b-eppler.bsky.social · 2mo ago

New preprint: Random network structure stabilizes neural manifolds We’re excited to share our new work on representational drift. doi.org/10.64898/202... Representational drift poses a puzzle. 👇 A short thread below. In the next days a figure by figure walk through will follow. 1/5 🧪🧠

My postdoc is coming to an end, so I'm looking for work! Let me know if you, or anyone you know, wants to hire a philosopher of biology/cognition with a knack for cross-disciplinary work, a focus on autonomy + agency, and experience writing for the broader public (10+ yrs in sci/tech journalism).

Looking to work with a postdoc. Prior experience with fMRI and computational modeling required, interest in psychiatry desired. Fellowship provides three years salary plus independent travel/equipment funds. Send CV and 2-3 manuscripts (preprints OK).

Our reply: the framework systematizes empirical practice; it's not an account of the nature of representation. Whether a neural response represents a feature is settled by comparing hypotheses, not an absolute evidence threshold. And this holds independently of questions about consciousness. (3/3)

Grateful for the chance to clarify our framework: our reply to Overgaard & Kirkeby-Hinrup's "Boundary issues for multidimensional frameworks of representation" — a comment on our Perspective on the conceptual dimensions of representation, in Nature Reviews Neuroscience: rdcu.be/frSNr (1/3)

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On March 26, 2026, during a debate on violence against women in Germany’s Bundestag, left-wing MP Kathrin Gebel was repeatedly interrupted by AfD MP Martin Reichardt. She responded: “Mr. Reichardt, the clitoris has 3,000 nerve endings, and you’re still more sensitive. That’s quite an achievement.”

Hey all—I’m at #MCLS2026 presenting my poster Thursday: the Ecology of Proof. A ~500K-attempt corpus of sentential & FOL proofs, analyzed from a foraging perspective—tracing movement flow through the directed graph of proofs. New direction for me, same foraging lens. Come check it out!

What does it mean for one part of the brain to 'sample' another? Or to 'search' another? I've said and so have many others--but how to understand that phrase without positing a little dude rummaging around?

We had a great time at Purdue! Thanks to all organisers and funders for this opportunity to carry out a unique interdisciplinary project in animal color experiences, accompanied with the right training and support. Now to get working 🧠

SPAN@socphilneuro.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We're excited to welcome our ITRC groups to Purdue this weekend for our @danafoundation.bsky.social funded workshop, featuring a session w/ @ucpews.bsky.social! Part of SPAN's mission is to provide resources to help foster intelligibility between phil & neuro + foster public engagement with science.