We're hiring! Postdoc position to study the neural control of reaching using high-density multi-area electrophysiology. 5 years of funding, great collaborative environment. Please share with anyone who may be interested. For details, see: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Pruszynski Postdoc 2026

Postdoctoral Researcher, Control Policies in the Primate Motor Circuit Pruszynski Lab @ Sensorimotor Superlab​ The Pruszynski Laboratory at Western University is seeking a postdoctoral researcher to j...

docs.google.com

1/N Excited to share a major update to this work, which includes (1) identification of a thalamocortical communication subspace, (2) cortical lesions which induce selective behavioral deficits, and (3) extraction of cortical readouts by EMG decoding. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Thread:

Britton Sauerbrei@brittonsauerbrei.bsky.social · last yr.

1/N How do neural dynamics in motor cortex interact with those in subcortical networks to flexibly control movement? I’m beyond thrilled to share our work on this problem, led by Eric Kirk @eric-kirk.bsky.social with help from Kangjia Cai! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The Neural Control & Computation Lab is recruiting a Postdoctoral Fellow to investigate the neural basis of learning, flexible neural computation, and skilled movement control using large-scale electrophysiology from single-neuron populations in non-human primates 🧠🐒 www.ncclab.ca/join-the-lab

Online planning of sequential actions Review by Jörn Diedrichsen (@diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social), Mehrdad Kashefi (@mkashefi.bsky.social), Amin Nazerzadeh, & J. Andrew Pruszynski (@andpru.bsky.social) tinyurl.com/2p9nbnbx

Many of the scientific questions we're interested in tackling require studying learning over long periods of time across the brain. This is challenging – which is why we're excited to say we've been developing a system for chronic wireless recording using long Neuropixels probes in macaque monkeys.

Natural behavior unfolds as a continuous stream of actions. Because these actions often occur in rapid succession, the brain must prepare multiple future actions while the current action is being executed. Our TICS piece explores how this works. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Best use case of AI so far!

Rude Law Dog@esghound.com · 3mo ago

This is A+ AI slop. I love it

Seems like seaborn really hates jet colormap!

M1 after a few months away ... never gets old. @arminpanjehpour.bsky.social @mkashefi.bsky.social

A fun Q and A that @mkashefi.bsky.social and I contributed to for @natcomms.nature.com along with Friston, @annechurchland.bsky.social, and others. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

While humans spontaneously dance to a beat, the evolutionary origins of this ability remain debated. Behavioral work has shown that primates can move to auditory rhythms after training. Our question was: How does this association emerge in the brain? www.biorxiv.org/content/10....

Reward-driven emergence of auditory pattern encoding in the primate motor system

The ability to anticipate rhythmic patterns is fundamental to human experience, enabling music appreciation, speech comprehension, and dancing in sync to music. How the brain learns to use acoustic information to guide motor behavior remains a key question whose neural underpinnings and evolutionary origins are debated, especially in non-human primates. To understand how brain areas involved in motor control naively respond to predictable tone patterns, we recorded large single neuron populations across primary somatosensory (S1), primary motor (M1), dorsal premotor (PMd), supplementary motor (SMA), pre-supplementary motor (preSMA) cortices, globus pallidus interna (GPi), and medial geniculate body (MGB) of a rhesus monkey. During passive listening (Experiment 1) with a reward only at the end of each trial, primarily the MGB, not motor areas, responded to the auditory tone patterns, ruling out the spontaneous entrainment of motor activity to auditory patterns. Almost all areas robustly

biorxiv.org

This week's sensorimotor superlab reading list is out https://superlab.ca/posts/2025-12-19-list316.html @andpru.bsky.social @diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social @gribblelab.org #neuroskyence #psychscisky #Sensorimotor

Are you interested in a MSc/PhD in human sensorimotor neuroscience? Learn to design experiments, analyze data, read & write papers, present at conferences, & work with a vibrant group of students & faculty in a world-class research environment. #neuroskyence #psychscisky gribblelab.org/join.html

Jörn Diedrichsen@diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social · 8mo ago

The Sensorimotor Superlab with @gribblelab.org and @andpru.bsky.social is a unique place to work and learn. We are now accepting MSc and PhD applications for Fall 2026. Join our awesome team at Western University... For application instructions see diedrichsenlab.org and gribblelab.org/join.html!

0/7 Excited to 📢 that our (@mkashefi.bsky.social @diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social @andpru.bsky.social) new preprint on sequence preparation and its effect on reaction time is now up: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Please get in touch if there is anything you'd like to discuss! Brief summary 🧵👇

Sequence preparation is not always associated with a reaction time cost

The extent to which a sequence of movements is prepared before initiating the first movement is a longstanding question in motor neuroscience. The observation that reaction time (RT) increases for lon...

biorxiv.org

Thrilled that our paper is out today in Nature! www.nature.com/articles/s4...

Sensory expectations shape neural population dynamics in motor circuits

Nature - Experiments with human volunteers and macaques show that expectations produced by probabilistic cueing of future sensory inputs shape motor circuit dynamics in order to increase the...

nature.com

The neural control & computation lab is recruiting! If you're interested in using large-scale neural population recordings to study how the brain learns to produce complex and flexible behaviours, please get in touch. www.ncclab.ca

This week's sensorimotor superlab reading list is out https://superlab.ca/posts/2025-09-12-list303.html @andpru.bsky.social @diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social @gribblelab.org #neuroskyence #psychscisky #Sensorimotor

Variance partitioning is used to quantify the overlap of two models. Over the years, I have found that this can be a very confusing and misleading concept. So we finally we decided to write a short blog to explain why. @martinhebart.bsky.social @gallantlab.org diedrichsenlab.org/BrainDataSci...

New preprint from the lab! 🧠 Led by Juliana Trach, w/ Sophia Ou Using fMRI, we discovered evidence for time-sensitive reward prediction errors (RPEs) in the human cerebellum. Builds on, and extends, recent work in both rodents and NHPs

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 11mo ago

The human cerebellum encodes temporally sensitive reinforcement learning signals https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.06.674658v1

Exited to share tomorrow new updates on trying to figure out how the neocortex and cerebellum talk to each other. Work by @carobellum.bsky.social, Ali Shabazi, and others in the lab!

Reza Shadmehr@rezashadmehr.bsky.social · 11mo ago

To understand cortico-cerebellar connectivity in humans, the usual approach is to exploit the correlations of functional brain imaging signals during rest. In this talk, Jorn Diedrichsen will present results suggesting that a better approach is to measure co-activation during specific tasks.

Excited to share my latest work with @jonathanamichaels.bsky.social @diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social & @andpru.bsky.social! We asked: How does the motor cortex account for arm posture when generating movement? Paper 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/10

Compositional neural dynamics during reaching

The complex mechanics of the arm make the neural control of reaching inherently posture dependent. Because previous reaching studies confound reach direction with final posture, it remains unknown how...

biorxiv.org

We're excited to share our new paper: “cTBS of prefrontal cortex in the behaving macaque: no evidence for within-target inhibition or cross-hemisphere disinhibition of neural activity” tinyurl.com/cTBSPFCNHP w/ @brian-corneil.bsky.social What did we find? Mostly... what we didn’t! 🧵

Heading to #cosyne2025 ? We're presenting new data exploring the geometry of neural dynamics in M1, PMd, PFC, SMA, and GPi during reaching movements with varying start locations, directions, and extents. Find me at Poster Session 3-091 — or anytime before or after!

Going to #Cosyne2025? Check out two posters from the lab, presented by @jonathanamichaels.bsky.social and @mkashefi.bsky.social.

New lab paper out now in JEP:G! From Juliana Trach, @mdebettencourt.bsky.social , @angelaradulescu.bsky.social , and myself. "Rewards Transiently and Automatically Enhance Sustained Attention." t.co/r72fZRn3Nh 👇

Can the motor system use sensory expectations to prepare for unexpected events? Excited to share my latest work with @andpru.bsky.social – where we establish that sensory expectations shape neural population dynamics in motor circuits! 🧵 and paper below 1/

It’s striking how profoundly the prevailing theoretical framework shapes our thinking.

What an awesome discussion we had today with @westernu.bsky.social’s Mehrdad Kashefi and Andrew Pruszynski! 🧠 Thanks a lot, @mkashefi.bsky.social, for sharing your work with the Motor Control Group! A lot to think about! #Sensorimotor #neuroskyence @andpru.bsky.social @annakorol.bsky.social