If you're around at Cosyne, join us for our workshop on modern efficient coding 👁️🧠

Sonica Saraf@sonicasaraf.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Excited to share our #Cosyne2026 workshop "Efficient coding in the modern age" w/ @s-azeglio.bsky.social & Pietro Zamberlan! We'll discuss how the efficient coding framework extends to dynamic and context dependent settings, and how it fails. For more info see shorturl.at/QmN60 See you there!

🧠🔬 Excited to share our #NeurIPS2025 paper: "Convolution Goes Higher-Order"! We asked: Can shallow networks be as expressive as deep ones? Inspired by biological vision, we introduce higher-order convolutions that capture complex image patterns standard CNNs miss. 🧵👇

🧠 How do neurons encode information? We know HOW MUCH, but what about WHAT information they encode? Our new work uses diffusion models to decompose neural information down to individual stimuli & features! 🎯Spotlight at #NeurIPS2025 🌟📄 arxiv.org/abs/2505.11309

Happy to share my first work with a connection to myopia, a collaboration with EssilorLuxottica www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Nonlinear spatial integration allows the retina to detect the sign of defocus in natural scenes

The retina can easily detect whether the eye is too small or too big thanks to the imperfections of the eye optics.

science.org

🕳️🐇Into the Rabbit Hull – Part II Continuing our interpretation of DINOv2, the second part of our study concerns the *geometry of concepts* and the synthesis of our findings toward a new representational *phenomenology*: the Minkowski Representation Hypothesis

Figuring out how the brain uses information from visual neurons may require new tools, writes @neurograce.bsky.social. Hear from 10 experts in the field. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...

Connecting neural activity, perception in the visual system

Figuring out how the brain uses information from visual neurons may require new tools. I asked nine experts to weigh in.

thetransmitter.org

🚨 New preprint out from our lab! 📄 The Rod Bipolar Cell Pathway Contributes to Surround Responses in OFF Retinal Ganglion Cells 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The Rod Bipolar Cell Pathway Contributes To Surround Responses In OFF Retinal Ganglion Cells

Sensory neurons can be influenced by stimuli beyond their receptive field center, yet the mechanisms underlying this surround modulation remain poorly understood. In the retina, many OFF ganglion cell...

biorxiv.org

Images (or image patches) are secretly multi-channel signals over groups. Below, the dihedral group of order 8: reflecting/rotating the image permutes the values in the magenta vector. So we can reshape the image into 8-tuples that all permute according to the dihedral group (edge case diagonals).

Thrilled to see this work accepted at NeurIPS! Kudos to @hafezghm.bsky.social for the heroic effort in demonstrating the efficacy of seq-JEPA in representation learning from multiple angles. #MLSky 🧠🤖

Hafez Ghaemi@hafezghm.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Excited to share that seq-JEPA has been accepted to NeurIPS 2025!

We present our preprint on ViV1T, a transformer for dynamic mouse V1 response prediction. We reveal novel response properties and confirm them in vivo. With @wulfdewolf.bsky.social, Danai Katsanevaki, @arnoonken.bsky.social, @rochefortlab.bsky.social. Paper and code at the end of the thread! 🧵1/7

Our illustrated guide to non-Euclidian ML is finally published! Check it out for ⭐️ gorgeous figures (with new additions!) on topology, algebra, and geometry in the field ⭐️ broken down tables for easy reading ⭐️ accessible text, additional refs, and more iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

🚨New paper🚨 Neural manifolds went from a niche-y word to an ubiquitous term in systems neuro thanks to many interesting findings across fields. But like with any emerging term, people use it very differently. Here, we clarify our take on the term, and review key findings & challenges rdcu.be/ex8hW

Do you study neural systems with feedback at different temporal-, spatial-, hierarchical-, data-, or computational- scales? Have you submitted your abstract to the "Neurocybernetics at Scale" symposium? Due to multiple requests, new abstract submission deadline is 18 July! #AI4Science #cybernetics

NeurReps is back for its 4th edition at NeurIPS 2025! Stay tuned for updates!

Symmetry and Geometry in Neural Representations@neurreps.bsky.social · last yr.

📢 Call for Papers: NeurReps 2025 ‼️‼️‼️ 🧠 Submit your research on symmetry, geometry, and topology in artificial and biological neural networks. Two tracks: Proceedings (9 pages) and Extended Abstract (4 pages). Deadline: Aug 22, 2025. www.neurreps.org/call-for-pap...

Exciting new preprint from the lab: “Adopting a human developmental visual diet yields robust, shape-based AI vision”. A most wonderful case where brain inspiration massively improved AI solutions. Work with @zejinlu.bsky.social @sushrutthorat.bsky.social and Radek Cichy arxiv.org/abs/2507.03168

Lack of spontaneous activity (#retinalwaves) in early development prevents the formation of retinal circuits critical for stabilizing images as we move through the world. doi.org/10.1016/j.ce....

🧠✨ Join us for LAMINR: Learning and Aligning Manifolds of Single-Neuron Invariances — uncover the geometry of thought through implicit neural representations! 📅 Mon, Jun 16 @ 18:00 CET 🔗 Zoom | PW: 314159 🎙️ Part of the #NeurReps Global Seminar Series #AI #Neuroscience #RepresentationLearning

NeurReps 2025 is starting to take shape! If you're interested in serving in the Program Committee 👇

Symmetry and Geometry in Neural Representations@neurreps.bsky.social · last yr.

NeurReps 2025 is on its way ! If you're interested in serving in the Program Committee, consider filling this form ! forms.gle/wgUXHT7Mq71n...

Excited to share our latest study! 🧠✨ We reveal how non-direction-selective retinal ganglion cells encode motion beyond their receptive field, relaying the unconventional signals to the brain. A new insight into multimodal neurons in visual processing! doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Why do diverse ANNs resemble brain representations? Check out our new paper with Colton Casto, @nogazs.bsky.social , Colin Conwell, Mark Richardson, & @evfedorenko.bsky.social on “Universality of representation in biological and artificial neural networks.” 🧠🤖 tinyurl.com/yckndmjt

Universality of representation in biological and artificial neural networks

Many artificial neural networks (ANNs) trained with ecologically plausible objectives on naturalistic data align with behavior and neural representations in biological systems. Here, we show that this...

tinyurl.com

Looking for the best systems #neuroscience #phd program? Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown has one! #PhDposition = fully funded. US-style lab rotations and an awesome community in Lisbon, Portugal. Apply by the end of Jan, 2025. http://bit.ly/4iB9SwP

I dream of a future in which single neuron dynamics ➡️ circuit motifs ➡️ distributed computations are taught as part of the same curriculum and no one bats an eye and everyone is happy.

Timothy O'Leary@timothyoleary.bsky.social · 2y ago

Apropos of never ending discussions about whether ANNs are "good" models of the nervous system, here is a slide I present to masters students showing a network that is found in motor control circuits *across phyla* (that's pretty ubiquitous!) I ask them to guess what it does...

New results! Visual adaptation changes the geometry of V1 population activity: frequent stimuli elicit smaller responses but become more discriminable. Similar results are seen in ANNs trained with metabolic constraints, suggesting these changes emerge from efficient coding. bit.ly/3VJHXRn

Adaptation shapes the representational geometry in mouse V1 to efficiently encode the environment

Sensory adaptation dynamically changes neural responses as a function of previous stimuli, profoundly impacting perception. The response changes induced by adaptation have been characterized in detail...

bit.ly

Created a starter pack of neuroscience in/from Paris. Let me know if you want to be added (the 'from' can include those not in Paris anymore) or just tap in if you want to know what we're talking about! Regardless, please re-tweet! go.bsky.app/3Zs9w5w

Rayhan and I are presenting today our work on "Diffusion-State Guided Projected Gradient for Inverse Problems." at the D3S3 Workshop. Joint work with Dr. Anima Anandkumar #AInScience #NeurIPS2024 [1/6] Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2410.03463

Eero Simoncelli on the geometry of the distribution of natural images

NeurReps has begun! Join us today for a program combining geometry/topology, deep learning, neuroscience, and interpretability

Our second Keynote speaker is @taliakonkle.bsky.social from Harvard University. Come to hear about "The Cortical Topography of Visual Space Representation"!

Join us for our next Keynote invited talk from Stefanie Jegelka on "In-context Symmetries via Contextual World Models"!