Amy Orsborn
@neuroamyo.bsky.social
Associate Prof at UW. Neural interfaces, motor learning, engineering learning. Believe it or not, my last name has two R's and zero E's. She/her
Critical follow up: the lab's pre-print celebration dessert tradition! Leo's dessert of choice was a lemon-y sponge cake with berries and cream. 🍰
Amy Orsborn@neuroamyo.bsky.social · 2w ago🧠 New preprint alert! 🧠 Leo led the heroic effort to improve how we map connections across large cortical networks in macaques—stably—over weeks to years. The secret sauce: a combo of optogenetics + µECoG + new signal processing to localize stim-driven responses. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
🚨 Big news! 🚨 Starting in 2027, I'll be spending time in beautiful Lisbon at the Champalimaud Center for Restorative Neurotechnology as part of a sabbatical & a Fulbright Fellowship.
8 UW faculty and staff named Fulbright Scholars; will conduct research around the world
Eight University of Washington researchers have been selected as Fulbright Scholars for 2026-2027 and will pursue studies around the world.
washington.edu
Leveling up my exploration via running: headed out to Bainbridge Island! Thanks for providing the beautiful weather and scenery, as usual, Seattle.
🧠 New preprint alert! 🧠 Leo led the heroic effort to improve how we map connections across large cortical networks in macaques—stably—over weeks to years. The secret sauce: a combo of optogenetics + µECoG + new signal processing to localize stim-driven responses. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Combining phase analysis and causal stimulation enables longitudinal mesoscale connectivity mapping
Uncovering the circuit mechanisms of flexible behavior requires characterizing how neural signals propagate across large-scale networks and tracking how those networks evolve over time. Signal propaga...
biorxiv.org
Fascinating things happen when computations/algorithms interact with the physical world! As they say, the brain has a body. 🧠 So timely as I head to the neurobiology of cognition Gordon Conference to talk about how motor learning is a lot more than just mastering precise muscle activity.😂
Amy Orsborn@neuroamyo.bsky.social · 3w agoSEATAC bringing us the AI future. It looks so efficient and seamless 🙃
SEATAC bringing us the AI future. It looks so efficient and seamless 🙃
My department, Neurobiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington (nbio.uw.edu), is hiring a new tenure-track Assistant Professor, application deadline 09/30/26. It's a broad search — molecular to organismal, all of neuroscience/physiology/biophysics welcome. apply.interfolio.com/187735
I'm gearing up for a sabbatical next year (more on that soon - stay tuned). I just declined all the calendar invites admins were sending out for faculty meetings in 2027. I want to bottle the joy I felt as I pushed that button for future use. Where are we on this tech, neural engineers? 😂
Truly a wild & amazing experience to have spent the day in a room where it was relevant for the host to ask "all of the Nobel Laureates in the room, please stand up" 🤯 My brain is full of ideas and excitement about the tremendous human endeavor of scientific discovery!
Amy Orsborn@neuroamyo.bsky.social · last mo.Excited to be part of the @nasonline.org Discovery Cohort for #RevolutionsInScience. I'm in DC celebrating science discovery & imagining what comes next when we explore science as a human endeavor. You can participate! Register to watch online tomorrow: events.nationalacademies.org/revolutions-...
Excited to be part of the @nasonline.org Discovery Cohort for #RevolutionsInScience. I'm in DC celebrating science discovery & imagining what comes next when we explore science as a human endeavor. You can participate! Register to watch online tomorrow: events.nationalacademies.org/revolutions-...
I just realized this bread I made is a perfect alignment of all my hobbies and needs: ✅ Weekend baking project ✅ Running fuel ✅ Appealing treats to offer crows as I try to make friends with them 😂🤯
Summer in Seattle means regular lunches outside. Which also means I'm re-energizing my project to make friends with the campus crows! Today's bread offering seemed to be appreciated 🍞🐦⬛
It's been a weird month or so recovering from this accident (can't recommend getting hit by a bike while running). But I think I have found a winning balance of what my body needs/can do right now and what my running -addicted brain wants: Strategic walk/jog routes that include a carb pitstop 😅🥯🏆
Amy Orsborn@neuroamyo.bsky.social · 3mo agoThe last few weeks have been an adventure, fascinatingly captured by this pair of Strava entries:
Folks are excited about using tech like AI to refine & replace how we use animals in science. It's an amazing possibility, but we can't be over-ambitious on the timelines. Learn more about how we use primates to create future cures and future refinements to science: wanbrc.uw.edu/how-nams-and...
How NAMs and Primates Create Future Cures - Washington National Biomedical Research Center
Science fiction is becoming reality at the Washington Biomedical Research Center. We’re at the forefront of innovating New Approach Methodologies, or NAMs. Two examples of these advanced tools include...
wanbrc.uw.edu
Hot off the presses, this study is now out in the Journal of Neuroscience! A quick write-up: www.jneurosci.org/content/46/2... And the full paper: www.jneurosci.org/content/46/2...
This Week in The Journal
Toward Improving Brain–Computer Interfaces Ryan A. Canfield, Tomohiro Ouchi, Hao Fang, Beatrice Macagno, Lydia I. Smith et al. (see article e1965252026) Researchers are working on improving motor ...
jneurosci.org
Amy Orsborn@neuroamyo.bsky.social · 10mo ago🚨Pre-print alert! 🚨https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.17.683171v1 Our new study tackles the question: do all neurons in motor cortices (MC) encode movement & coordinate as we move? Answering this question will be key for effectively targeting motor representations in BCIs.
Our lab does the big paper celebration for preprints (w/ a dessert party!). I joke it's because that's what we most control. This proved very true for one paper whose peer review journey was mighty enough to merit a second celebration. We went peak Seattle: Molly Moon ice cream & a chat in the sun ♥️
The last few weeks have been an adventure, fascinatingly captured by this pair of Strava entries:
Top Pot Donut Dash 5k - peak Seattle vibes and so fun. 🍩 It's been a minute since I felt strong while running, so it was exciting to hit a new PR while not fully pushing all out. ♥️
Got a paper acceptance email in the middle of a day filled with amazing science chats with amazing colleagues, and ending it with a flight home with an empty middle seat in my row. I should probably buy a lottery ticket, eh? 😂🙌
Why hello, ATL! You're looking lovely this morning. 🙌 Had an amazing day at GaTech yesterday and excited to hangout with folks at Emory today before heading back to the PNW!
It took me a while to embrace running hills. But Seattle views certainly help make the struggle feel worth it. 😍🫶
We're at the time of year where scheduling a post-lunch walk around campus is basically mandatory. My Friday timeline cleanse offering.
If you're interested in emerging ideas in neural interfaces, I humbly suggest my lab's latest: www.nature.com/articles/s42... Neural interfaces create dynamic interactions between the brain & devices. This means mean we need new engineering approaches beyond typical ML to "decode" a static brain
Computational framework to predict and shape human–machine interactions in closed-loop, co-adaptive neural interfaces - Nature Machine Intelligence
Madduri et al. introduce a computational framework grounded in control and game theory to model co-adaptation between users and decoders in neural interfaces. This framework enables a principled desig...
nature.com
Is it just me or did every Internet recommendation algorithm seem to crank up the adaptation rate to 11 recently? I've been pulled into a crazy & strong local minimum across so many platforms. I'm worried Spotify is somehow going to find me songs about cottage cheese protein brownies.
It's been a very busy few months in the lab - we minted THREE new PhDs! Congratulations Si Jia, Pavi and Ryan 🙌🙌🙌 We took advantage of some Seattle sun to celebrate today. So fortunate to get to work with this amazing crew. 🧠♥️
When you order a macchiato from the campus cafe and they ask you what size (🤯)... The only option is to pivot to an 8 oz latte 🤣🫠
a man wearing a white sweater with the words `` oh no '' on it is standing in a room .
ALT: a man wearing a white sweater with the words `` oh no '' on it is standing in a room .
media.tenor.com
Last week, we welcomed Ryan Canfield from @neuroamyo.bsky.social's lab to hear about his latest preprint: "The spatiotemporal structure of neural activity in motor cortex during reaching" Check out his talk here: youtu.be/F23AW0k4y_M
Ryan Canfield (University of Washington)
YouTube video by Andrew Pruszynski
youtu.be
Turns out when you put a bunch of nerds together in an amazing setting, amazing science happens! It's easy to focus on the negatives sometimes, but feeling very fortunate for some of the huge perks of this job right now 🙌😍♥️
