This is wild. >1/2 of HC synapses disappear in artificial hibernation, come back in same/similar locations & memories intact. ~1/2 of engram synapses-between two memory-tagged cells-are clustered on dendrites, those preferentially spared. Not biggest synapses. 1/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Fabian Schneider
@fabianschneider.bsky.social
Doctoral researcher at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE). Interested in memory, audition, semantics, neural coding, spiking networks. http://mvpy.tools
It's not "the new normal": this heatwave shows that we're never going to have "normal" again - by @mjflepage.bsky.social www.newscientist.com/article/2531...
If you aren't terrified by this heatwave, you should be
The extreme heat currently being felt in Europe isn’t the new normal – much worse is to come, and we are doing far too little to adapt, says Michael Le Page
newscientist.com
After 18 months of R&D with a team of specialist academics, I'm VERY excited to say that @carbonbrief.org has just launched 'Project Cosmos'... ...the world's largest database of climate research Our hope is this becomes a major new resource interactive.carbonbrief.org/cosmos/index...
Project Cosmos – the world’s largest database of climate change research
interactive.carbonbrief.org
🚨New preprint w/ @fabianschneider.bsky.social @helenblank.bsky.social Within the predictive processing framework, we found something counterintuitive: a more precise prior can make a cause less likely to be inferred. Sounds wrong but makes sense. Here's why👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 📜1/11
A recent paper by Epp et al. in NN claimed that ~40% of reported BOLD findings could be misinterpreted. In our reanalysis, we identified several statistical issues that, in our view, undermine these conclusions. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 👇 1/11
biorxiv.org
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
The illusory simplicity of the feedforward pass: evidence for the dynamical nature of stimulus encoding along the primate ventral stream
In studying primate vision, a large body of work focuses on the first feedforward sweep. During this initial time window, information is thought to pass through ventral stream regions in a stage-like ...
arxiv.org
Prediction without understanding sustained astronomy through a thousand years of epicycles, writes @tonyzador.bsky.social. AI is now offering neuroscience the same deal. #neuroskyence 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
Significant acceleration of global warming since 2015, finds news PIK study with @rahmstorf.bsky.social Recent warming: around ~0.35°C per decade. 1970–2015 average: just under 0.2°C per dec. ➡️Current rate is higher than in any decade since records began in 1880. www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/late...
"The software detected 18 cases in the first 600 datasets that were serious enough to report...based on that limited sample, around 3% of papers contain these types of errors." 😭
If you want to take your mind off awful politics and look at awful science stuff instead, this is a good read: www.sciencedetective.org/scientific-d...
Our work with @georgkeller.bsky.social on testing predictive processing (PP) models in cortex is out on biorvix now! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... A short thread on our findings and thoughts on where we should move on from PP below.
A functional influence based circuit motif that constrains the set of plausible algorithms of cortical function
There are several plausible algorithms for cortical function that are specific enough to make testable predictions of the interactions between functionally identified cell types. Many of these algorithms are based on some variant of predictive processing. Here we set out to experimentally distinguish between two such predictive processing variants. A central point of variability between them lies in the proposed vertical communication between layer 2/3 and layer 5, which stems from the diverging assumptions about the computational role of layer 5. One assumes a hierarchically organized architecture and proposes that, within a given node of the network, layer 5 conveys unexplained bottom-up input to prediction error neurons of layer 2/3. The other proposes a non-hierarchical architecture in which internal representation neurons of layer 5 provide predictions for the local prediction error neurons of layer 2/3. We show that the functional influence of layer 2/3 cell types on layer 5 is incompatible with the hierarchical variant, while the functional influence of layer 5 cell types on prediction error neurons of layer 2/3 is incompatible with the non-hierarchical variant. Given these data, we can constrain the space of plausible algorithms of cortical function. We propose a model for cortical function based on a combination of a joint embedding predictive architecture (JEPA) and predictive processing that makes experimentally testable predictions. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Swiss National Science Foundation, https://ror.org/00yjd3n13 Novartis Foundation, https://ror.org/04f9t1x17 European Research Council, https://ror.org/0472cxd90, 865617
biorxiv.org
Same sound, different perception: Do expectations change what you hear?👂🧠 We paired faces w topics and played the same ambiguous speech w different faces. The brain sharpened sensory signals toward predictions and showed gated prediction errors at higher levels. Read @plosbiology.org. Blueprint👇
Sensory sharpening and semantic prediction errors unify competing models of predictive processing in human speech comprehension
Speech comprehension relies on predictive mechanisms, but models disagree on whether the brain prioritizes expected or unexpected information. This study shows that sharpening of sensory representatio...
dx.plos.org
Same sound, different perception: Do expectations change what you hear?👂🧠 We paired faces w topics and played the same ambiguous speech w different faces. The brain sharpened sensory signals toward predictions and showed gated prediction errors at higher levels. Read @plosbiology.org. Blueprint👇
Sensory sharpening and semantic prediction errors unify competing models of predictive processing in human speech comprehension
Speech comprehension relies on predictive mechanisms, but models disagree on whether the brain prioritizes expected or unexpected information. This study shows that sharpening of sensory representatio...
dx.plos.org
After 5 years of data collection, our WARN-D machine learning competition to forecast depression onset is now LIVE! We hope many of you will participate—we have incredibly rich data. If you share a single thing of my lab this year, please make it this competition. eiko-fried.com/warn-d-machi...
WARN-D machine learning competition is live » Eiko Fried
If you share one single thing of our team in 2026—on social media or per email with your colleagues—please let it be this machine learning competition. It was half a decade of work to get here, especi...
eiko-fried.com
Introducing CorText: a framework that fuses brain data directly into a large language model, allowing for interactive neural readout using natural language. tl;dr: you can now chat with a brain scan 🧠💬 1/n
How well do classifiers trained on visual activity actually transfer to non-visual reactivation? #Decoding studies often rely on training in one (visual) condition and applying it to another (e.g. rest-reactivation). However: How well does this work? Show us what makes it work and win up to 1000$!
IMAGINE-decoding-challenge
Predict which words participants were hearing, based upon brain activity recordings of visually seeing these items?
kaggle.com
🧠 Regularization, Action, and Attractors in the Dynamical “Bayesian” Brain direct.mit.edu/jocn/article... (still uncorrected proofs, but they should post the corrected one soon--also OA is forthcoming, for now PDF at brainandexperience.org/pdf/10.1162-...)
Regularization, Action, and Attractors in the Dynamical “Bayesian” Brain
Abstract. The idea that the brain is a probabilistic (Bayesian) inference machine, continuously trying to figure out the hidden causes of its inputs, has become very influential in cognitive (neuro)sc...
direct.mit.edu
In neuroscience, we often try to understand systems by analyzing their representations — using tools like regression or RSA. But are these analyses biased towards discovering a subset of what a system represents? If you're interested in this question, check out our new commentary! Thread:
🚨 Fresh preprint w/ @helenblank.bsky.social! How does the brain acquire expectations about a conversational partner, and how are priors integrated w/ sensory inputs? Current evidence diverges. Is it prediction error? Sharpening? Spoiler: It's both.👀 🧵1/16 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
It's been a while since our last laminar MEG paper, but we're back! This time we push beyond deep versus superficial distinctions and go whole hog. Check it out- lots more exciting stuff to come! 🧠📈
🚨🚨🚨PREPRINT ALERT🚨🚨🚨 Neural dynamics across cortical layers are key to brain computations - but non-invasively, we’ve been limited to rough "deep vs. superficial" distinctions. What if we told you that it is possible to achieve full (TRUE!) laminar (I, II, III, IV, V, VI) precision with MEG!