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 🧪🧠

If an action results in error, each neuron requires an individualized teaching signal that guides change in its output. This is the credit assignment problem of learning. Are there neurons in the brain that can compute such a sophisticated teaching signal? Yes. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Climbing fibers encode the gradient of a loss function for the cerebellum

Neurons in the brain are often many synapses away from motoneurons, yet if a movement results in error, each distant neuron needs a teacher that considers its specific contribution to production of th...

biorxiv.org

This recent post by @earlkmiller.bsky.social got my attention. It shows how abstraction could emerge in the primate PFC. The paper is hard, but the main idea can be simplified to low-dims, so I made fun a little animation. A🧵with my toy model and notes: #neuroskyence #compneuro #NeuroAI

Out today on @nature.com! Connecting neural specialization, population geometry, and their functional implications across the cortical hierarchy. So grateful for this beautiful and fun collaboration with @shuqiw.bsky.social, S Muscinelli, L Paninski, and @stefanofusi.bsky.social!

Rarely categorical, highly separable representations along the cortical hierarchy - Nature

Cortical circuits prioritize diversity over categorical structure, supporting a computational regime geared towards high-dimensional, highly separable neural representations.

nature.com

Excited to share this work, led by Andrew Zimnik and Sherry An, from @mchurchland.bsky.social and my labs! www.cell.com/neuron/fullt... 1/2

Sparse component analysis: A method that uncovers separable computations within neural population activity

Zimnik et al. provide a new, interpretable, unsupervised dimensionality approach for neural population activity. Their approach, sparse component analysis (SCA), reveals the latent factors correspondi...

cell.com

Now out at PNAS - congratulations to Ramanujan Srinath and the team! Ram's ability and willingness to connect all these data, models, and ideas has changed my thinking/interpretation of many findings. I suspect I will keep learning from this study for a long time. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The structure of correlated variability reflects task-relevant information in sensory neurons | PNAS

Shared trial-to-trial variability across sensory neurons is reliably reduced when perceptual performance improves, yet this variability is low dime...

pnas.org

Marlene Cohen@marlenecohen.bsky.social · 12mo ago

One of the joys of being a scientist is the ability to think about a problem for a long time. Our new preprint solves a mystery that has been bugging me since I was a graduate student (which was, ahem, a while ago). 🧪🧠🧵1/ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Come see our poster tomorrow morning (#4307 in Hall A)! Paper, code, and more can be found at onnoeberhard.com/q-commit. Joint work with @claireve.bsky.social and Michael Muhelebach.

Onno Eberhard@onnoeberhard.com · last mo.

I am in Seoul at ICML to present our newest paper "Commit to the Bit: Reactive Reinforcement Learning Done Right". We show that finding reactive policies in POMDPs is easier than previously thought and that the ubiquitous 𝑞⋆-realizability assumption is stronger than necessary. 🧵

I am in Seoul at ICML to present our newest paper "Commit to the Bit: Reactive Reinforcement Learning Done Right". We show that finding reactive policies in POMDPs is easier than previously thought and that the ubiquitous 𝑞⋆-realizability assumption is stronger than necessary. 🧵

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...

Don’t miss one of the best conferences of the whole EU folks, if you do anything computational, present it at Bernstein we always appreciate more diversity of topics and methods.

Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience@bernsteinneuro.bsky.social · last mo.

⏰ Last-minute reminder! Only 48 hours left to submit your Poster abstracts and Travel Grant applications for the #BernsteinConference 2026! 🗓️ Deadline: July 1 All information 👉 bit.ly/4rQowo6... #CompNeuro #Neuroskyence #BernsteinNetwork

„Potential mechanisms and functional significance of aperiodic neural activity“ Timely review article by Michael Preston Jr, @syd-smith.bsky.social & Brad Voytek

Nature Human Behaviour@nathumbehav.nature.com · last mo.

Potential mechanisms and functional significance of aperiodic neural activity

Major preprint update! 🎉 How can learned behaviors generalize across environments when the hippocampus remaps? Our original preprint showed that task-related latent structure persisted across contextual remapping. In this revision, we add the major finding that... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Conserved neural population geometry supports behavioral generalization

Learned behaviors often generalize across contexts even though neural representations can vary substantially between environments. How the brain preserves task-relevant information across these changi...

biorxiv.org

Our new paper is out this week in Nature Neuroscience! www.nature.com/articles/s41... We built a BCI that works with the brain's natural geometry — and we found that people could learn to play a video game with their brains in <1 hr of training. This efficiency is groundbreaking & here's why:

Human learning of noninvasive brain–computer interfaces via manifold geometry - Nature Neuroscience

Busch et al. use nonlinear neural manifolds to help humans gain rapid control over a noninvasive brain–computer interface, allowing them to learn how to play a video game with real-time fMRI neurofeed...

nature.com

Our python package for real-time targeting of birdsong syllables "Moove" is finally out! Thanks to my co-authors Nils Riekers, @goebl.bsky.social and Lena Veit. Our pre-print is online on biorxiv and our code is available on GitHub. Check it out! doi.org/10.64898/202... github.com/veitlab/moove

Real-Time Segmentation and Classification of Birdsong Syllables for Learning Experiments

Songbirds are essential animal models for studying neuronal and behavioral mechanisms of learned vocalizations. Bengalese finch (Lonchura striata domestica) songs contain a limited number of acoustica...

biorxiv.org

Happy to see this paper from @xiaoyuxuu.bsky.social and @zaixucui.bsky.social out on how the development of structural connectivity aligns with the sensorimotor-association axis www.nature.com/articles/s41...! Exciting convergence with work from @audreycluo.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Xiaoyu Xu@xiaoyuxuu.bsky.social · 2mo ago

White matter tracts form the structural foundation of brain networks, yet how structural connectivity develops across the whole connectome remains unclear. In our recent @natcomms.nature.com article, we report a continuous, robust developmental pattern along the S-A connectional axis.😁

Neuropixels + Optogenetics = Neuropixels Opto Combining high-resolution electrophysiology and optogenetics. 960 sites, 28 emitters, 2 colors. Today in @natmethods.nature.com doi.org/10.1038/s415... Thanks to @wellcometrust.bsky.social, @alleninstitute.org, @hhmijanelia.bsky.social & team.

New review with Cheng Xue at U Chicago @cxue.bsky.social in Trends Neurosci@cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social! We discuss the neural geometry of task-dependent computation: disentangled encoding, RNN modeling, switch cost, etc. www.cell.com/trends/neuro...

The ‘neat’ and ‘messy’ in task-dependent neural geometry and computation

To solve diverse real-world tasks, the brain must flexibly switch between task rules and adjust computations. Recent advances in analyzing neural data and modeling neural networks have revealed their ...

cell.com

🔴 New results 🔴 How distributed is the brain-wide network that is recruited for perception? 👁️👂🧠 Thrilled to share our new results on brain-wide distributed processing underlying natural vision and audition! Link and 🧵 👇

🚨 New paper in @nature.com We asked why two hippocampal areas with very different anatomy, CA3 and CA1, often seem to code space so similarly? By recording bats flying up to 200m, we found that the difference was hidden by scale! www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵 1/11

Sparse-to-dense coding transformation between hippocampal areas CA3 and CA1 - Nature

The hippocampus&nbsp;exhibits a CA3-to-CA1 coding transformation that combines fast learning with an efficient, compressed neural code.

nature.com

www.amacad.org/publication/... my new article in the American academy of arts and sciences journal Daedalus. Part of a special issue in AI+Science lead by James Manyika.

Nature research paper: Subspace communication in the hippocampal–retrosplenial axis go.nature.com/4tsyJqB

Subspace communication in the hippocampal–retrosplenial axis - Nature

Hippocampal–neocortical communication reconfigures predetermined circuit motifs to flexibly encode experiences.

go.nature.com

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

We are super excited to welcome Dmitry Kobak @hippopedoid.bsky.social as a new VIB.AI group leader! The Kobak lab will officially kick off in April at the VIB.AI Ghent hub. More: vib.ai/en/news/dmit...

New paper in @pnas.org #Neuroskyence The brain state during general anesthesia looks like hybrid of sleep and coma. We also identify distinct neural patterns that are unique to anesthesia using #EEG 👇 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @yale.edu @wutsaiyale.bsky.social @yaleschoolofmed.bsky.social

Donoghue et al. introduce the Human Single-Neuron Pipeline, an open source processing pipeline for collecting and analyzing human single-neuron data: doi.org/10.52294/001... @ohbmossig.bsky.social @ohbmofficial.bsky.social #OpenDatasets #SpecialIssues

Unbelievably honoured to read Tatiana Engel's (@engeltatiana.bsky.social) wonderfully written Preview on our work "Linking neural manifolds to circtuit structure in recurrent networks" (with @lpezon.bsky.social & @gerstnerlab.bsky.social) in this issue of Neuron www.cell.com/neuron/fullt... 🙏

Finding clues to circuit structure in population dynamics and single-neuron selectivity

In this issue of Neuron, Pezon et al. introduce neural circuit models with flexible connectivity structure that can generate low-dimensional population dynamics with different distributions of single-...

cell.com

New paper from the lab! "Plasticity and language in the anaesthetized human hippocampus" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Plasticity and language in the anaesthetized human hippocampus - Nature

In the hippocampus, complex processing of sensory stimuli occurs even in the unconscious state.

nature.com

🥳 Super excited to share our lab's first preprint, led by @hungyun.bsky.social "Distinct tasks engage shared neural subspaces in human hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵(1/9)

Anatomy sets things up, but it’s not the whole story. A low-D communication subspace from PFC to motor cortex reconfigures with context, routing action signals so the same movements can be driven by different rules without rewiring the whole network. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroscience

A communication subspace relays context-dependent actions from human prefrontal to motor cortex - Nature Neuroscience

Context-dependent behavior selects actions according to task demands. Using direct brain recordings in humans, Binish et al. uncover how coordinated population activity efficiently channels informatio...

nature.com

We think this finding is really exciting as it opens up new avenues to study neural communication in human (intracranial) EEG beyond pairwise connectivity metrics such as coherence. Free link to the paper: rdcu.be/fgqIB Thanks to all coauthors, incl @jonasterlau.bsky.social