How does the brain continually adapt? Fresh in @natureportfolio.nature.com our super exciting collaboration with @mark-j-wagner.bsky.social showing that the cerebellum contextualises cortical dynamics enable multi-task learning: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Granule cells reorient cortical trajectories to separate contexts - Nature

Simultaneous imaging of premotor cortex and cerebellar granule cells in mice learning two skills in parallel shows that trajectories generalize in cortex but coherently reorient apart in granule cells...

nature.com

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/...

This study is very important for all the stakeholders in academia: for the students and postdocs pushing the research, for the PIs guiding them, for the journal editors and reviewers evaluating the work, for the funders and institutions that evaluate us, etc.

Dan Larremore@danlarremore.bsky.social · last wk.

🎉 New paper (and data) on editorial & peer review at Science and Science Advances, two elite general science journals. With a wonderful team! @samzhang.bsky.social, @nicklaberge.bsky.social, Quinten and @aaronclauset.bsky.social. 1/ www.science.org/doi/full/10....

More interesting work on dendrites! (and how the allow the same neural population to do different things)

Christoph Miehl@cmiehl.bsky.social · last wk.

Super happy that our work on "Assembly-based computations through contextual dendritic gating of plasticity" got published @cp-neuron.bsky.social 👇 This was co-led with Sebastian Onasch, with help from @mmiekus.bsky.social, under the guidance of @gjorjulijana.bsky.social For detailed 🧵, see below.

Get outside! A global analysis of more than 3,800 studies that involved over 10 million people shows that contact with nature has several positive impacts. Exposure to nature was linked to lower anxiety & depressive symptoms, and feelings of relaxation. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here's the paper - the abstract suggests that students who outsource their homework to AI later do worse on exams (which makes sense!) papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Henry Mance@henrymance.ft.com · 2w ago

Woah.

Best graphical abstract ever! (also the article seems very interesting)

Genome Biology and Evolution@genomebiolevol.bsky.social · 2w ago

Agwamba et al. identify the western Iberian Peninsula as the primary source of American populations of house mice; divergence dates are consistent with post-15th-century European maritime expansion and settlement in the Americas 🔗 academic.oup.com/gbe/article/... #societyjournal #evolution #genome

Our digital sphinx, a cautionary tale about the interpretation of connectome-body models, is now a reviewed preprint at @elife.bsky.social. We are grateful to the reviewers for engaging seriously with what we hope is a useful (if absurd) demonstration. elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

John Tuthill@tuthill.bsky.social · 5mo ago

🧵 New preprint led by @bingbrunton.bsky.social, @elliottabe.bsky.social, @lawrencehu.bsky.social We gave a worm brain control of a fly body and it walked What did we learn? Nothing, other than deep reinforcement learning is effective We call it the digital sphinx www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

**Please repost** If you're enjoying Paper Skygest -- our personalized feed of academic content on Bluesky -- we'd appreciate you reposting this! We’ve found that the most effective way for us to reach new users and communities is through users sharing it with their network

At long last! I'm excited we can finally share the final published form of CURBD, our method to disentangle multi-regional interactions with RNNs, out today in Neuron. Thanks to @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social and @deisseroth.bsky.social and all of our collaborators! 📃: doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

Kanaka Rajan@kanakarajanphd.bsky.social · 4w ago

(1/8) Our approach for untangling brain-wide interactions is out today in @cp-neuron.bsky.social! Current-Based Decomposition (CURBD) uses RNNs constrained by real neural data to reveal the input driving neurons, uncovering how brain regions talk to each other. doi.org/10.1016/j.ne... 🧵👇

@memming.bsky.social on 🔥

Harrison Ritz@hritz.bsky.social · 4w ago

hell ya

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 · 3mo 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 🧪🧠

"Replay occurs in the dorsal striatum during offline consolidation of a procedural memory in mice" - even with total hippocampal lesions pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42493550/ It looks like memory replay is a general capability of the brain - not a special feature of the hippocampus!

A mathematical formula inscribed on a wall at the Maya site of Xultun in Guatemala has revealed the name of an important Maya mathematician-astronomer for the first time. And the person was called Sak Tahn Waax, or ‘White-Chested Fox’. 🧪 🏺 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Mathematics formula found on Maya wall rivals insights of ancient masters

Mathematical texts from a Maya site in Guatemala identify an astronomer called Sak Tahn Waax.

nature.com

New preprint (well, very updated). 🤖🧠🧪 We find that an abstract model of neuromodulation lets spiking neural networks perform much better, particularly in challenging noisy environments, using less energy. Relevant to #neuroscience and #neuromorphic computing. 🧵👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Neuromodulation enhances the capability and efficiency of spiking neural networks

Spiking neurons underlie the brain’s extreme energy efficiency, and therefore have great potential in neuromorphic computing, although realising this efficiency in practice has proven challenging. We ...

biorxiv.org

I find the evidence for prediction to be pretty weak actually. One of the core behavioral papers people cite is Mehta & Schaal "Forward Models in Visuomotor Control": journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10..... But in the paper, they admit there is no decisive evidence for fwd models

It is (and has been) super exciting to be part of this new Centre directed by @johnwkrakauer.bsky.social at @champalimaudr.bsky.social . Lots of interesting things have already happened and may more are brewing

Santa Fe Institute @sfiscience.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Last fall, SFI's John Krakauer was named director of the Centre for Restorative Neurotechnology (CRN) at Lisbon's Champalimaud Foundation, a center he helped create. Krakauer has been connected to Champalimaud for more than a decade, first as a visiting scientist at its Centre for the Unknown.

1/2) Please let's all remember that GWT is a theoy of access consciousness (what is available for verbal reasoning) and not phenomenal consciousness (subjective experience): philpapers.org/rec/BLOOAC Obviously, in this study access consciousness is literally what they test in the LLMs. #NeuroAI 🧪

Anthropic {bot}@anthropicbot.bsky.social · 2mo ago

New Anthropic research: A global workspace in language models. Of everything happening in your brain right now, only a tiny fraction is consciously accessible—thoughts you can describe, hold in mind, and reason with. (1/2)

If you're at #FENS2026, go check out our two posters from the lab: one today, another tomorrow Recommended for locomotion / skilled behaviour / neurophysiology / neural data / BCI aficionados

Cecilia Gallego-Carracedo@ceciliagc.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Are you in #FENS2026 and want to hear about what mice BCIs tell us about the cortical and striatal activity? Come tomorrow to our poster PS06-09PM-624 at 2pm. Also don't miss Martin's work today in cortico-subcortical dynamics underlying adaptive locomotion PS04-08PM-441 at 2pm.

Preprint your papers, it's a win-win (and I could add more wins ad infinitum)

Richard Sever@richardsever.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“move from preprint to peer-reviewed publication leaves the central claims of most abstracts intact, indicating preprints are a reliable source…papers that were never posted as preprints were retracted at roughly twice the rate of those that were…” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Did you know? Renewables have just overtaken coal as the world's largest source of electricity 34% – global renewable share, up 2x in 20yrs 48% – EU 37% – China 26% – US 24% – India

really cool! congratulations to the authors for this important discovery

Ricard Solé@ricardsole.bsky.social · 3mo ago

How did complex cells emerge? In this groundbreaking paper, @tonigabaldon.bsky.social & co show that eukaryotes arose through multiple waves of ancient genetic exchange involving diverse bacteria (& giant viruses!) revealing a far more complex origin than we imagined. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This paper is absolutely wild and amazing. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Homing pigeon navigation relies on superparamagnetic macrophages under overcast conditions

Birds use a variety of navigational strategies, including the geomagnetic field, especially when other cues are not available, such as under overcast or nocturnal conditions. Magnetite particles in th...

science.org

Great essay indeed! Another quote: "Karl Popper contrasted clocks, systems that can be decomposed and optimized piece by piece, with clouds, systems whose behavior emerges from complex interactions." (1/2)

Melanie Mitchell@melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 3mo ago

"Science is not simply a sequence of tasks that can be optimized....The scientific system thrives on inefficiency: redundant efforts, failed attempts, and divergent paths. These are not costs to be eliminated but sources of discovery." Excellent essay! ⬇️ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

interesting thread on the biological implementation of ring attractor manifolds

Brad Hulse@bradkhulse.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Story time friends... Ring attractor networks rely on fine-tuned symmetric connectivity. The fly head direction network has ring attractor dynamics but heterogeneous connectivity. How is this possible? 1/🧵 Link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This is a great article from @juangallego.bsky.social. I still feel less excited about "neural foundation models" than Juan, but I have to say he makes his case very convincingly, both for the advantages and disadvantages. Well worth a read!

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 5mo ago

These models can partly generalize across species, brain regions and tasks, suggesting that a set of machine-learnable rules govern neural population activity, writes @juangallego.bsky.social. But will we be able to understand them? #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/neuroai/why-...

A friend just reminded me about our sensorimotor starter pack, so here it is: go.bsky.app/U4oyFgw If you're into sensorimotor control of movement and it's application this should be a good place to start. Also DM to be added, there are a bunch of spots for people to be added

Cool new work on an old important question

Raeed Chowdhury@raeedcho.com · 5mo ago

New preprint! 🧵🧪🧠 doi.org/10.64898/202... Upshot: somatosensory cortex contains both feedback *and* intended movement signals (a.k.a. corollary discharge). These two signals exist orthogonally in neural space, flexibly allowing both fast state estimation and external perturbation detection. 1/

What are the real promises and looming perils of neural foundation models? 🧠 I put my thoughts on (virtual) paper for @thetransmitter.bsky.social following a very energised workshop at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social 2025. It's also my first piece for them 😊

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 5mo ago

These models can partly generalize across species, brain regions and tasks, suggesting that a set of machine-learnable rules govern neural population activity, writes @juangallego.bsky.social. But will we be able to understand them? #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/neuroai/why-...

These models can partly generalize across species, brain regions and tasks, suggesting that a set of machine-learnable rules govern neural population activity, writes @juangallego.bsky.social. But will we be able to understand them? #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/neuroai/why-...

Why neural foundation models work, and what they might—and might not—teach us about the brain

These models can partly generalize across species, brain regions and tasks, suggesting that a set of machine-learnable rules govern neural population activity. But will we be able to understand them?

thetransmitter.org