Anirudh Wodeyar @awodeyar@qoto.org

Special issue of Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience dedicated to the pioneering work of Mark Stokes.

Get Stoke(s)d! Introduction to the Special Focus
https://direct.mit.edu/jocn/article/35/1/1/113585/Get-Stoke-s-d-Introduction-to-the-Special-Focus

Counting down, Day 4 (of 10): Modern & fascinating ideas about the brain for us all to discuss. How likely is each idea to be true? And if true, what are the implications?

Brain idea 7: Stimulation of the brain is effective at treating some patients with some disorders (such as Parkinson's disease and Depression), but in many cases, it does not work. This may be because current approaches target single brain regions but many functions in the brain are distributed across many areas. It is also the case that the brain is full of complex, feedback loops that pull it into "attractor states" that may be hard to pull away from. New work in physics focuses on controlling complex systems like these by stimulating multiple nodes. Someday, we might be able to use these approaches to 'dance' the brain from dysfunction to function.

The friendly version, as summarized by @PessoaBrain (Figure 4):
https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01908

A deeper dive:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.01531

#neuroscience
#BrainIdeasCountdown

Half way through the CountDown, Day 5 (of 10): Modern & fascinating ideas about the brain for us all to discuss. How likely is each idea to be true? And if true, what are the implications?

There once was a lot of optimism in brain research around the idea that if we could figure out the genetic mutations that lead to brain disorders, we could develop drugs to treat them. However, this hasn't always worked out so well, even when brain disorders are linked to single gene mutations. For example, the mutations associated with Fragile X and Huntington's Disease were determined over 30 years ago and we still do not have good treatments for them. Why not? It's complicated (e.g. those genes regulate other genes). One promising approach is gene therapy, which may be able to restore the mutated proteins even in the absence of understanding what the genes do. Gene therapy is currently used to treat two other nervous system disorders: spinal muscular atrophy and a form of retinal degeneration.

The friendly versions:
https://fragilexnewstoday.com/news/gene-therapy-shows-promise-in-fragile-x-rat-model/
https://www.uniqure.com/programs-pipeline/huntingtons-disease

The deeper dive: An excellent talk describing why finding a treatment for Fragile X has been so difficult:
https://www.simonsfoundation.org/event/cyclic-amp-regulation-and-pde4d-inhibitor-bpn14770-in-fragile-x-syndrome-a-life-journey/

#neuroscience
#BrainIdeasCountdown

@WiringtheBrain @NicoleCRust @juangallego Indeed and agreed! Biological details have a many-to-few mapping onto actually behaviourally-relevant dynamics, which can be quite low-dimensional and have a lot of preservation across individuals. Our paper that Kevin mentioned: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.26.509498.abstract

Lots of others starting to explore this space of questions with us too!

Continuing the holiday celebration on Day 2 (of 10). Topic: Modern and fascinating ideas about the brain for us all to discuss. How likely is each idea to be true? And if true, what are the implications?

Brain idea 9: Across different individuals, the same brain functions are implemented by biological details that vary a lot. This is true even for simple circuits like the ones that control the stomach of a crab, where the numbers of ion channels can vary 2-6x across different crabs but the circuit always does the same thing.

The friendly version:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/eve-marder-on-the-crucial-resilience-of-neurons-20210517/

The deeper dive:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959438822001040

#neuroscience
(And because I'm trying to work out the hashtag habit here ...)
#BrainIdeasCountdown

Turns out the hippocampus discretizes time by footsteps. 🦶

Dynamic Synchronization between Hippocampal Spatial Representations and the Stepping Rhythm
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.23.481357v1

We're looking for 16 (!) new colleagues!

We have job openings at the University of Groningen for assistant professors in the Departments of Psychology, Pedagogical & Educational Sciences, and Sociology.

#AcademicJobs

https://www.rug.nl/about-ug/work-with-us/job-opportunities/?details=00347-02S0009T4P&dept=gmw

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