Anirudh Wodeyar @awodeyar@qoto.org

For those who do have dancing shoes... 😉
Science's annual Ph.D. dance contest is now open >
https://www.science.org/content/article/ready-spotlight-sciences-annual-phd-dance-contest-now-open

#scicomm
#wetenschapscommunicatie

📢 ERC-funded postdoctoral position @DondersInst!

We are looking for candidates passionate about touch to use robotics, somatosensory psychophysics, fMRI (MVPA), and TMS on studying somatosensation.

#youhaveaparttoplay

Join us!!

Deadline of applications: 15 Jan

https://www.ru.nl/en/working-at/job-opportunities/postdoctoral-researcher-in-cognitive-and-sensorimotor-neuroscience-at-the-donders-centre-for-cognition

Just discovered this amazing lecture by Lars Chittka on bees.

In one part that mesmerized me, they track bees in the wild using radar and reconstruct what a bee would see as it navigates the world.

The rest of the talk overall is amazing and covers how bees "can recognize flowers and human faces, exhibit basic emotions, count, use simple tools, solve problems, and learn by observing others". Highly recommend!

(Starting at the radar part)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iut33k3MHyI&t=1260s

#bee #insects

Dear early career researchers: I have been writing papers for 17 years. A professional editor just sent back edits on a first draft of a 4 page text. Except for 5 lines, the whole document was red. This is how it goes! Don't feel bad if you get a massive amount of suggested changes on early drafts. The paper will most likely be better for it in the end.

Hahah, so following @bgeurten 's example I got #chatgpt to make rap lyrics from our recent abstract 😀 Then I went on and let #uberduckai perform it as Snoop Dogg 😆

🎶 http://sndup.net/jp5b
📃 https://pastebin.com/UAH9b5QP

sources:
https://chat.openai.com
https://uberduck.ai/
https://go.nature.com/3bMteRK

𝗗𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀?

**Tomorrow**

Neuroscience & Philosophy Salon discusses Matthew Larkum's lab's paper.

Please join @cdj and I and help solve consciousness!

Here's the paper that will be the focus of our discussion:
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001651

Please register.
Dec 8, noon EST-US:
https://umd.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIldeypqDIrHtDWRbiFp6Dm58yw60AVehKD

#neuroscience
#philosophy

Can anyone recommend an interesting, discussable brain stimulation paper (ideally non-invasive)?

I'm doing a journal club with some students while I'm in India and I want it to be fun!

@PessoaBrain @NicoleCRust

It's an actively researched question (e.g., https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.19.452951v2 and recent work from Lea Duncker, Dan O'Connor, Maneesh Sahani, and Krishna Shenoy, I don't think it's out yet.)

Those of us busy inferring latent dynamics from epjhys data hope to see fun bifurcations in what we infer -- but inferred is a long way from hard proof.

Decision-making models have examples (e.g., https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1104171?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubmed and http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3733-05.2006) but that's models not data.

Dynamics colleagues, what are some of the best examples of something like a "bifurcation" (dynamical systems speak) that we see in experimental brain data?

Anything comes to mind?

#neuroscience
#complexity
@DrYohanJohn
@NicoleCRust
@SussilloDavid
@neuralengine
@sganguli

#ScienceInGraphics: "Two Heads" by the Friths and Daniel Locke, with a cameo appearance by @antoniahamilton. Recommended! https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/29/two-heads-by-uta-frith-chris-frith-alex-frith-and-daniel-locke-review. #neuroscience #GraphicNovel #ArtInScience #brain

"More problematically, we show that DNNs account for almost no results from psychological research."

This looks like it will provoke some lively debate. 😛

Call for commentary at BBS:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/announcements/call-for-papers/call-for-commentaries-bowers

#Neuroscience #MachineLearnng #ML

HT @PessoaBrain

snow dusting

#autumn #Belledonne #Isere #photography #landscapephotography

3,013 neurons, half a million synapses: the complete #connectome of the whole #Drosophila larval brain!

Winding, Pedigo et al. 2022. "The connectome of an insect brain" https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.28.516756v1

We’ve mapped and analysed its circuit architecture, from sensory neurons to brain output neurons, as reconstructed from volume electron microscopy, and here is what we found. 1/

#neuroscience #connectomics #vEM #volumeEM

Many studies have shown that humans preferentially remember surprising events. In this preprint, we show that memory is also biased by long-term, multi-state surprise. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.27.517985v1

So, what is long-term surprise? Here’s our example from the paper: Imagine in late January 2020 you predicted that Bernie Sanders would become the Democratic nominee for US president, which was ~20% likely per 538.

Pls Boost!

New review in Nature Reviews Neuroscience
"From cognitive maps to spatial schemas"
With co-authors:
Delaram Farzanfar, Morris Moscovitch & Shayna Rosenbaum
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-022-00655-9

"Better Inference in Neuroscience: Test Less, Estimate More"

is my new paper out in the JNeuro making the case to:

a) use hypothesis testing better, to actually test the *researcher's* hypothesis, and

b) to use estimation for the many, many situations in neuroscience in which a researcher is not yet ready to conduct a strong hypothesis test

Open-access pre-print is here: https://tinyurl.com/testless or get the 'official' version here: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/42/45/8427