One faculty ad, 200 applicants, 600 papers before the first shortlist. Nobody can read that, so metrics do the reducing — and slowly a committee stops reading at all. An essay on what we lose when judgement is handed to citation counts and h-indices. 🧵 academicrenewal.substack.com/p/when-acade...

When academics stop reading

Metrics can help decide where to look, but they turn dangerous when they replace contact with the work itself.

academicrenewal.substack.com

New preprint out 🚨 “Predictive pursuit emerges in high-dimensional recurrent neural networks”! This was an awesome collaboration with co-first author @fatihdinc.bsky.social , @andyalexander.bsky.social, @xiaoxiao-lin.bsky.social, and May Chen biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/

Couldn’t agree more. And where systems-level differences exist across species, we are gifted a natural manipulation that can point to critical circuit elements/mechanisms

Nicole Rust@nicolecrust.bsky.social · 5mo ago

We thus need to expedite our asssessment of when & how nonhuman animal data is relevant, & cross species divides need to be reconciled ASAP. I do agree that these evaluations should not be made with limited evidence - but when it requires more data, we need to prioritize acquiring it.

We’re hiring! The Suthana Lab @ Duke is looking for a Research Assistant to join our team studying human memory & real-world 🧠 dynamics using wearable tech & intracranial recordings. Apply: careers.duke.edu/job/Durham-C... You can also email suthanalab@duke.edu with CV/questions. Please share!

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

Our new preprint: The primate hippocampus parses experience into event-aligned neural states, creating a temporal scaffold for organizing behavior. At #SfN25 ? Come chat at my poster — Wednesday AM (PP14; 414.03).

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 9mo ago

The Primate Hippocampus Constructs a Temporal Scaffold Anchored to Behavioral Events https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.12.687961v1

1/ 🚨 New preprint! 🚨 Excited and proud (& a little nervous 😅) to share our latest work on the importance of #theta-timescale spiking during #locomotion in #learning. If you care about how organisms learn, buckle up. 🧵👇 📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 💻 code + data 🔗 below 🤩 #neuroskyence

Yup, this happened to me: grant submitted in September, study section that should have discussed it in February was delayed until late March, then grant was withdrawn by NIH 3 days before the study section met because of lack of this document. I lost almost a year. Don't let this happen to you!

NIH Vigils@nihvigils.bsky.social · last yr.

NIH APPLICANTS: Your application will be WITHDRAWN BEFORE REVIEW if you have an international collaboration and do not include a Foreign Justification. Normally this could be provided after review as JIT but NOT ANYMORE. You have been warned.

If you work with faculty whose ESI eligibility (NIH applications) ended/ends Oct 2024 to June 2025, they're getting an extension to Oct 2025. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide... h/t NORDP list

Exciting news!! I’m joining the tenure-track faculty at University of Colorado Boulder this fall as an Assistant Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience! The Sosa Lab will study how memory is shaped by cognitive and physiological demands, including during pregnancy and the postpartum period. 🧵

It’s an incredible feeling to see something you’ve poured your heart into come to life. This work was born from my curiosity about hippocampal “cognitive tuning.” Our interpretation of the environment depends on our actions, constantly evolving as we pursue our goals www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hippocampal neuronal activity is aligned with action plans - Nature

Using high-density electrophysiological recordings, how internally generated cell assemblies are updated by action plans to meet external goals is explored.

nature.com

"The inevitability and superfluousness of cell types in spatial cognition" w Ken Luo @robmok.bsky.social Whether place, border, head direction, Jennifer Aniston, or whatever cells, are we fooling ourselves? Are these intuitive findings scientific discoveries? 1/6 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The inevitability and superfluousness of cell types in spatial cognition

bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

biorxiv.org

"exhaust fumes" made it into the official abstract! hence completing the journey from an epiphenomenal shitpost blog to a full-blown review paper. all thanks to this cast of co-authors (esp. Sander), our TICS editor Lindsey Drayton, and two very engaged reviewers (@danielemarinazzo.bsky.social)

Sander van Bree@sandervanbree.bsky.social · 2y ago

Our review on the theoretical status of oscillations and field potentials is out! What are their effects, and what can electrophysiology signals reveal about how the brain works? w/ @dlevenstein.bsky.social @prokraustinator.bsky.social Bradley Voytek @rdgao.bsky.social www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

What do you get if you ask a recurrent network (like the PFC or Entorhinal cortex) to generalise a transition structure? Turns out different things depending on how intimate they are with an external memory (like Hippocampus). Elegant theory led by @jcrwhittington.bsky.social

Surya Ganguli@suryaganguli.bsky.social · 2y ago

Stellar new work lead by the inimitable James Whittington in Neuron that develops a new theory unifying episodic and working memory and explains diverse hippocampal and prefrontal data: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt... w/Will Dorrell, @behrenstimb.bsky.social Mohamedy El Gaby

This list has doubled. Who haven’t I found?

Jon Rueckemann@jonrueckemann.bsky.social · 2y ago

go.bsky.app/LdtUYZS I created a starter pack for the growing community of hippocampus physiologists that have joined the great migration. Also included the physiology-adjacent. Tell me who I haven’t found yet

go.bsky.app/LdtUYZS I created a starter pack for the growing community of hippocampus physiologists that have joined the great migration. Also included the physiology-adjacent. Tell me who I haven’t found yet

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Ultimately, someone has to think through all this data! And much of it is shared - it’s just begging for us to.

Have you wondered whether fast spatiotemporal brain dynamics like traveling waves are local, confined to just one region, or whether they are shared across many regions simultaneously? The latest work from Zhiwen Ye in my lab has the answer! Thread- www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Brain-wide topographic coordination of traveling spiral waves

bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

biorxiv.org

One more reminder that I am recruiting a PhD student(s) this cycle! You can apply through UCSB Psych or the Dynamical Neuroscience Graduate Program. Both deadlines are 12/1. Please feel free to reach out with any questions. psych.ucsb.edu/prospective-... dyns.ucsb.edu/graduate/apply #neuroskyence