Jeffrey C. Erlich @jerlich@qoto.org

blavaan 0.5-1 is now on CRAN, including initial functionality for two-level structural equation models. Estimation happens via #mcmc_stan

If you don't know these models, they are multivariate Gaussian models with three levels (e.g., multiple response variables within people within schools).

Some further info is here:
https://ecmerkle.github.io/blavaan/articles/multilevel.html

Learn how easy it is to make beeswarm and raincloud plots (more transparent alternatives to box plots) using {ggbeeswarm}, {ggdist} & {gghalves} in a new ALA Labs post by me & Shandiya Balasubramaniam

https://labs.ala.org.au/posts/2023-08-28_alternatives-to-box-plots/post.html

#rstats #dataviz #QuartoPub #AusTraits #ggplot2

“Our study revealed a previously unknown cooperative thalamocortical circuit mechanism in which the VIP neurons work as a switching board. When VIP neurons are off, pulvinar suppresses the neocortex, but when VIP neurons are on, pulvinar can boost the neocortex. Sensory prediction error signals thus emerge through a collaborative action of neocortex and thalamus.”

Shohei Furutachi and colleagues in the Hofer and Mrsic-Flogel labs have shown how sensory prediction error signals arise in V1, in a new preprint.

Read the full story: https://www.sainsburywellcome.org/web/blog/deciphering-brains-prediction-machine

The Neuro-Cooper Open Science Prizes

I am thrilled to announce that the 2023 Neuro-Cooper Open Science Prizes are officially open for applications! For those unfamiliar with the prize, it stands as a beacon in the scientific community, recognizing and rewarding both junior and senior researchers who are pushing the boundaries of open neuroscience.

Check out the full details of the application process here
https://at.theneuro.ca/cooperprizes

Three years ago, we launched this prize with a simple yet ambitious goal - to elevate those who embody the spirit of open science, fostering collaboration, data sharing, and transparency within neuroscience. Today, the Neuro-Cooper Open Science Prizes have become a respected staple in our community, and I am humbled by the impact it has made.

On a personal note, after serving as the chair of the selection committee for the last three years, I have decided to step down from my role. The journey has been enlightening, full of inspiring people and innovative ideas. I'm so happy that Thomas Duncan has accepted to take over the committee, perpetuating our shared commitment to open science.

As we open the floor for the 2023 applications, I want to extend my gratitude to all the researchers, collaborators, and institutions who have made the Neuro-Cooper Open Science Prizes what it is today. Your relentless pursuit of open and collaborative science is the driving force behind this initiative.

To the future applicants - I can't wait to see how you're transforming the world of neuroscience. Keep breaking those boundaries!

#OpenScience #Neuroscience #Collaboration #Innovation#NeuroCooperPrize

I slightly wish the media would switch its messaging from "We're all gonna die!!!" to "Here's what we need to do to stop the dying" (starting with - defund the fossil fuel companies and vote environment...)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66229065

I finally carved out some time to sit down and finished what I promised
@steffilazerte almost 15 months ago.

I wrote about how I use the r-universe (by @rOpenSci) to not only deploy The #CarpentriesWorkbench packages, but also stable versions and bugfixes _for its depenendencies_.

https://zkamvar.netlify.app/blog/r-universe-and-cran/

#RStats

Congratulations to @lili on a superb PhD defense today!

Watercolor artwork by @lili's co-advisor Bing Brunton.

#neuroscience #phd

I went to sign some books at Woodstock's The Golden Notebook bookshop today and they gave me this book as a thank you. Two hours later her death was announced.

Nurture versus nature:

"Betty Hart and Todd Risley wanted to know why, despite best efforts in preschool programs to equalize opportunity, children from low-income homes remain well behind their more economically advantaged peers years later in school. Each month, they recorded one full hour of every word spoken at home between parent and child in 42 families, categorized as professional, working class, or welfare families. Two and a half years of coding and analyzing every utterance in 1,318 transcripts followed. By age 3, the recorded spoken vocabularies of the children from the professional families were larger than those of the parents in the welfare families. Between professional and welfare parents, there was a difference of almost 300 words spoken per hour. Extrapolating this verbal interaction to four years, a child in a professional family would accumulate experience with almost 45 million words, while an average child in a welfare family would hear just 13 million—coining the phrase the 30 million word gap."

https://products.brookespublishing.com/Meaningful-Differences-in-the-Everyday-Experience-of-Young-American-Children-P14.aspx

I don't think everyone realizes how much #neuroscience #opendata is really downloaded and reused...

e.g. our dataset of responses to visual stimuli has 18,000 downloads; wholebrain #zebrafish neural activity from the Ahrens lab has 7,000 downloads; Nick Steinmetz's eight-probe Neuropixels data has 6,500 downloads. and there are many commonly used neuro datasets on websites that don't count downloads that must have thousands too!

post your data and they will come :) #openscience

We are delighted to announce that Tim Behrens (@behrenstimb) has joined SWC as a Group Leader.

The Behrens Lab will strive to understand the neural mechanisms that support flexible goal-directed behaviour. In doing so, the team hope to build new bridges between human and animal neuroscience, between biological and artificial intelligence, and new methods for integrating across scales of neural activity.

Find out more: https://www.sainsburywellcome.org/web/research-news/tim-behrens-joins-swc-group-leader

We are excited to share that Dr Julia Harris will join SWC as a Group Leader in January.

The research conducted in the Harris lab will follow the activity of individual neurons across cycles of wake and sleep. The team will examine the cellular mechanisms involved in sleep-mediated circuit reorganisation and how these changes influence and refine behaviour across repeated cycles of wake and sleep.

Find out more: https://www.sainsburywellcome.org/web/research-news/julia-harris-open-sleep-lab-swc

Our review paper on #cortical integration of #vestibular and #visual signals is now out on @AnnualReviews. We delve into the fascinating topic, shedding light on knowledge gaps and suggesting promising directions for future research. Check it out!

#multisensoryintegration #percepcion #spatialnavigation #selfmotion #cortex #neurosciene #neuralcircuits

https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-neuro-120722-100503

I'm finding it a little hard to work today with this in my head.

Antarctic ice extent is now 6.4 standard deviations below the mean. That is, I'm reliably told, a one in 13 billion year event.

We're about to see a lot of shit hit a lot of fans. And we are far from ready.

Business as usual is over. Politics as usual is over. We need to be putting our effort into building systems that can help us survive what greed and power and wilful blindness have wrought.

#ClimateCrisis #Antarctica

This is an old project, but by some miracle it's still working and I woke up this morning wanting to celebrate the things I love more.

This Inkplate e-ink screen shows Conway's Game of Life, seeded from tarpits I have on the Internet. The tarpits are programs on my computer that superficially look like insecure Telnet and Remote Desktop services, but actually exist to respond super slowly and make bots scanning the Internet 'get stuck'.

When a bot connects to the tarpit, the data it sends gets squished into a 5x5 grid and 'stamped' onto a Game of Life board. Data from a bot at the IP address 1.1.x.x will get stamped on the top left corner, data from a bot at 254.254.x.x will get stamped on the bottom right corner.

Conway's Game of Life, a set of simple rules that govern whether cells should turn on or off, updates the display once per second. The result is that bot attacks end up appearing as distinct 'creatures', that get bigger and more angry looking over time (as their centre is updated with new data). After the attack finishes, the 'creature' eventually burns itself out.

Despite that description, it's a really chill piece of art that doesn't draw too much attention but I can happily watch for a long time.

Credit for the idea goes to @_mattata, I had been wanting to make a real-life version of XKCD #350 for years before seeing his Botnet Fishbowl project.

#projects #inkplate #esp32 #eink #infosec #tarpit

@NicoleCRust @axoaxonic

Why wouldn't emotions be amenable to computational theories/modeling? When you hear news and have an emotional response, that's a computation. Information coming in is turned into anger, sadness, whatever else. A computational theory would be quite helpful in order to explain why certain emotions rather than others arise in response to certain inputs