Looking for a postdoc in motor control / systems neuroscience? I'm seeking candidates to develop a Connected Minds Fellowship proposal with me at York University: $70K/yr for 2 years + benefits, plus an $8.5K/yr research allowance. Deadline: Sept 27, 2026. 🧵

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

Official job posting coming when I get back from the cottage but if you're interested in a post-doc doing multi-area high-density electrophysiology in the cortico-thalamic circuit during reaching, feel free to reach out!

Andrew Pruszynski@andpru.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Very happy to receive a CIHR Project Grant to continue our work on how sensory signals are organized in the thalamo-cortical motor circuit.

(apart from the important point that if we let AI do all our thinking, we are doomed) generally speaking this is why I have come to view presentations and paper writing as *doing science*, just as much as lab work or running computer simulations or whatever. Communication and discussion are central

Cian O'Donnell@cianodonnell.bsky.social · 3mo ago

During my postdoc I was trying to move to a new area, my supervisor said: you have to go to a conference, it's the only way to learn what they are thinking and what the key questions are. He was completely right. Science is a collective and social human pursuit, not a bunch of pdfs online

During my postdoc I was trying to move to a new area, my supervisor said: you have to go to a conference, it's the only way to learn what they are thinking and what the key questions are. He was completely right. Science is a collective and social human pursuit, not a bunch of pdfs online

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

At @jama.com today, 2 radiologists publish the correct consent form for a total body MRI in healthy people Note "no major medical society recommends whole-body MRI screening in the general population because it is unproven, and the harms likely outweigh the benefits." jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Prediction without understanding sustained astronomy through a thousand years of epicycles, writes @tonyzador.bsky.social. AI is now offering neuroscience the same deal. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/machine-lear...

Can AI do neuroscience without understanding?

Prediction without understanding sustained astronomy through a thousand years of epicycles. Artificial intelligence is now offering neuroscience the same deal.

thetransmitter.org

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 · 6mo 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-...

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

On the latest episode, @braininspired.bsky.social with @juangallego.bsky.social about the wealth of evidence that supports the view that neural manifolds are real and useful, even if they may not completely solve the age-old mind-body problem. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/brain-inspir...

Juan Gallego on manifolds and populations of neurons

A wealth of evidence supports the view that neural manifolds are real and useful, even if they may not solve the age-old mind-body problem.

thetransmitter.org

🧵 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...

Our paper is out in Science Advances! What makes primate hands so dexterous? We show that evolutionarily distinct spinal and cortical pathways work together to balance stability and flexibility, supporting remarkable primate hand control. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Primate dexterous hand movements are controlled by functionally distinct premotoneuronal systems

Distinct spinal and cortical pathways coordinate muscle synergies and fine control to support primate dexterous hand movements.

science.org

“If your evidence is purely predictive, stop making mechanistic claims—or start designing the experiment that would let you”

Konrad Kording@kordinglab.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Well-predicting machine learning in no way means that you can understand how the world works. open.substack.com/pub/kording/...

Open PhD position in our neural interfaces lab at University of Zaragoza within the @bsicos.i3a.es to work in the framework of our @erc.europa.eu project ECHOES. The PhD will be focused on analyzing peripheral neural signals to muscles. ➕ℹ️ i3a.unizar.es/es/ofertas-d... Share, please ;)

The Neural Control and Computation Lab is seeking a skilled part-time software engineer in Toronto to lead the development of ATHENA (Automatically Tracking Hands Expertly with No Annotations), our open-source, Python-based toolbox for 3D markerless tracking! www.yorku.ca/health/resea...

New preprint! We show that people with tetraplegic spinal cord injury can use their residual motor unit activity to achieve up to three dimensional control using non-invasive high-density surface EMG With my co-first authors Xingchen Yang and Ciara Gibbs www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/13

Intuitive, multidimensional motor unit control after paralysing spinal cord injury using non-invasive recordings

Spinal cord injury (SCI) results in profound motor impairment for approximately 20 million people worldwide. Regaining hand use is one of their highest priorities. Interestingly, even severely affecte...

medrxiv.org

💬 Viewpoint: Mass abstract submissions in #MedEd have led to inflated metrics, less meaningful research, and misaligned incentives for trainees and institutions. ja.ma/3MYsmvO

I was admittedly a little sad when our SCI study didn’t initially feature in “the list” but am really happy to see it now! (On my wife’s 30th birthday too!) Many thanks!! @andpru.bsky.social, @gribblelab.org, @diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social superlab.ca/posts/2025-1...

🚨Job alert🚨 The lab has up to *3 postdoc openings* for comp systems neuroscientists interested in describing and manipulating neural population dynamics mediating behaviour This is part of a collaborative ARIA grant "4D precision control of cortical dynamics" euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/383909

3 Postdoctoral Research Fellows

Champalimaud Foundation (Fundação D. Anna de Sommer Champalimaud e Dr.

euraxess.ec.europa.eu

Teaching chatbots to say “I don’t know” could curb hallucinations. It could also break #AI’s business model. https://scim.ag/49cPY9d

AI hallucinates because it’s trained to fake answers it doesn’t know

Teaching chatbots to say “I don’t know” could curb hallucinations. It could also break AI’s business model

scim.ag

🚨Big news!🚨 The lab is relocating to Lisbon, joining a great team of experimental and theoretical neuroscientists, and the Neurotechnology Warehouse, a new initiative to bridge basic and translational research. I'll be sharing postdoc openings soon. Come join us in this new incarnation of the lab!

Champalimaud Research@champalimaudr.bsky.social · last yr.

🧠🎼 What does it take to restore movement? Neuroscientist and engineer, @juangallego.bsky.social, joins the new Centre for Restorative Neurotechnology at the Champalimaud Foundation. 🔗 Find out more in this interview: www.fchampalimaud.org/news/juan-al...

‪@benhayden.bsky.social‬ @tyrellturing.bsky.social‬ @jmgrohneuro.bsky.social‬ @pessoabrain.bsky.social I see a lot of talk on here about how we should avoid "x does y" talk because the brain is "a dynamic, reverberant, reciprocally interconnected system". But this does not follow. A thread...

Congrats to @alighavampour.bsky.social and @mnlmrc.bsky.social for developing a new paradigm for hand synergy learning. If you are looking for a motor skill task that seems impossibly difficult and really needs to learning to be mastered, here it is: journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10....

A paradigm to study the learning of muscle activity patterns outside of the natural repertoire | Journal of Neurophysiology | American Physiological Society

The acquisition of novel muscle activity patterns is a key aspect of motor skill learning, which can be seen, for example, when beginner musicians learn new guitar or piano chords. To study this proce...

journals.physiology.org

🚨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

Check out our new review/perspective (w/ @juangallego.bsky.social & Devika Narain) on neural manifolds in the brain! It was a lot of fun to think through these ideas over the past couple of years, and I'm excited it's finally out in the world! 🔗: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 📄: rdcu.be/ex8hW

A neural manifold view of the brain - Nature Neuroscience

Recent advances in neuroscience have revealed how neural population activity underlying behavior can be well described by topological objects called neural manifolds. Understanding how nature, nurture...

nature.com

Preprint out -- using intramuscular microelectrode arrays to detect residual motoneuron activity in tetraplegic spinal cord injury, and then using that activity for control Credit to my other co-first authors Agnese Grison and Ciara Gibbs 1/n www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Multidimensional motoneuron control using intramuscular microelectrode arrays in tetraplegic spinal cord injury

Loss of hand function after spinal cord injury (SCI) significantly impairs independence and quality of life. Although residual muscle activity recorded on the skin can provide intuitive control signal...

medrxiv.org

Take a look at our recent article on neural interfaces based on EMG. We propose some new ideas regarding how one can take advantage of muscle recordings to estimate neural activity in the central nervous system. I hope you enjoy it! lnkd.in/duAHSRB5 Temporary open link to the paper: rdcu.be/etI2K

🚨 In our world riddled with misinformation and sensationalization, we must be cautious about handling accusations of scientific misconduct in our community. Weaponizing a public internet campaign is not the way. 📖 Read "A plea for academic decency" link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A plea for academic decency - Journal of Comparative Physiology A

In an internet age when a viral sensationalist story gains far more traction than a nuanced and balanced discussion, we have become used to some politicians, media and web-based influencers bending th...

link.springer.com