Ken Miller @kendmiller@qoto.org

The NSF AI Institute for Artificial and Natural Intelligence (ARNI) seeks Postdoctoral Research Fellows. Fellows will be based at @Columbia, NYC, but can work with ARNI researchers at multiple institutions. More info: https://arni-institute.org
#NeuroAi #AIResearch #neuroscience

@MiriShuli You can see the eLife Board's statement here: https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/495baf34/statement-of-the-elife-board-of-directors
Even if there were other problematic social media engagements as they claim, this one wasn't problematic, it was just ferociously attacked and needed free speech defense. And if they wanted to fire him for other things, they should have done so entirely separately from this. But they were succombing to intense pressure pushing against this tweet and what it expressed, and I suspect the Board was susceptable to the arguments that suppress criticism of Israel in so many contexts. One of the six Board members has resigned over this, his statement will be coming out tomorrow. See also https://twitter.com/drdevangm/status/1716585826992181488?t=cbO2tzwpn_ztnNlcdehx3g&s=19

@failedLyndonLaRouchite I'm Jewish. I am wanting to move away from twitter but for this issue, or the Gaza war, or news in general, it is still the only place, tho not as good as it was. I hope that changes.

You can find the tweets including the link to the onion article on @mbeisen's twitter account, Oct 13 and 14.

@tdverstynen I don't think their hand was forced. They were under very strong pressure from a group of Israeli scientists who took offense, for reasons that are still somewhat opaque to me. It was a last straw, perhaps, in that the eLife Board's explanation was "his approach to leadership, communication and social media has at key times been detrimental to the cohesion of the community we are trying to build and hence to eLife’s mission. It is against this background that a further incidence of this behaviour has contributed to the board’s decision." But it was succumbing to pressure from the Israeli side, and I'm afraid this Board was sympathetic to the arguments that suppress criticism of Israel in many contexts. Fundamentally, if they had other reasons to fire him, they should have cleanly separated them from an incident of his political expression; instead, that incident was the precipitating incident for dismissal. It led to controversy, outrage from the group of Israeli scientists, and so that made it for them another example of his detrimental social media side, rather than being a sincere but unfair and one-sided attack. The Israelis insist that it is not his politics but something about how he expressed his politics in a way that gave them great offense and was insensitive to their grieving, and tho I don't fully understand their point I think that it still comes down to politics -- his emphasizing Palestinian suffering without first focusing on their own, and his doing so in a bitter or sardonic joke or ironic piece (the Onion piece) rather than just a show of empathy, was, in the end, I think just unacceptable to them, they found it hurtful and offensive. They're entitled to their feelings, but unfortunately they used them to very narrowly circumscribe the allowed range of political expression, and to make many people afraid of publicly criticizing Israel or supporting the Palestinians.

@crash_course we debated. we wanted people to have to sign in with their email to prevent trolls, so in the end we decided on this. every solution has its downsides unfortunately. Sorry.

Well, they did it. eLife fired Michael Eisen. Absolutely outrageous. The bounds of allowed thought tighten. Any criticism of Israel is out of bounds. A new McCarthyism, except instead of communists under the bed, it's people who think it matters both when Israelis are slaughtered AND when Palestinians are slaughtered. And many, many in the academic community, seeing this, are afraid to speak, especially those without tenure, & even w/ tenure especially those from Middle Eastern countries other than Israel. How easily they can be slandered as anti-semitic should they speak.

Please sign our petition calling for this *not* to happen, and to defend academic freedom: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfdJyIQzIsTypmmZXIi-RfSjbe4Psp1RIvjXz-DxWJKA5hHIQ/viewform

#neuroscience #israel #palestine #freespeech #biology

@JosephMeyer @MolemanPeter @WorldImagining @albertcardona @NicoleCRust

I believe there is a connection between creativity and depression (though this is based on experience, not on real data), but it is definitely not that you are creative while depressed. While in depression it can be a struggle just to get out of bed and eat; creative juices are not flowing. Nothing is flowing, except darkness and pain.

But I think that whatever gives rise to creativity, or at least one form of whatever gives rise to creativity, is linked to a vulnerability to depression. Creativity involves an inward search, deep introspection, far more I think than the average person usually experiences. And rumination, when focused on the painful aspects of one's life (and almost every bit of life has some pain and cringe along with joy and accomplishment) and of one's anticipated future, is a key aspect of depression. Somehow this inward focus that can lead to creativity can also, in some subset at least, yield vulnerability to depression.

@violetmadder @WorldImagining @albertcardona @MolemanPeter @NicoleCRust

One of the symptoms of depression is that you suffer the delusion that you are a liability, that the world and in particular your loved ones would be better off without you. This is absolutely a delusion, a symptom of the disease, not a sign of an instinctive socially adaptive mechanism, not based on reality.

Loved ones are absolutely crushed by suicide; they love you, they need you, you are a great plus in their lives, and to lose one they love by suicide is a tragedy and a horror they never completely recover from.

And the delusions that you are a burden in other ways -- at work, say -- are just that, a delusion. Co-workers are thinking the person is doing great, when the person is under the delusion they have failed in their job.

Scientists in life/neuro sciences: defend academic freedom. Sign our petition to eLife/HHMI saying Michael Eisen should not be censured for expressing his political opinions. Can be anonymous.

A chill is setting into academia. Many, especially without tenure, are afraid to express their opinions on the situation in Israel/Gaza. The leading edge of this chill has been the attacks on Eisen. Whatever your personal opinion, defend academic freedom by signing this petition.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfdJyIQzIsTypmmZXIi-RfSjbe4Psp1RIvjXz-DxWJKA5hHIQ/viewform

New work with Alessandro Sanzeni, Agostina Palmigiano, Tuan Nguyen, Nicolas Brunel & others in Neuron:

Unveiling the Mechanisms Behind Reshuffling Visual Responses via Optogenetic Stimulation in Mice and Monkeys.

Ale's tweeprint: https://twitter.com/AlessandroSzeni/status/1715468767587643556
Author's share link (free access to Dec 9): https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1hyQd3BtfH5N1R

#neuroscience

@beneuroscience @debivort @yoginho @tyrell_turing @NicoleCRust

This conversation is genuinely confusing to me. @yoginho seems to be saying that "computation" means anything that can be mechanized, reduced to an algorithm or program, and the brain is not limited to that. @tyrell_turing seems to be saying that a computation is anything that a physical system can instantiate, and so a brain, being physical, does computations.

I"m confused as to whether there is genuine disagreement here, or just different definitions of computation. @yoginho can you explain what are, or give examples of, things a physical system (a brain) can do that are not computations by your definition? @tyrell_turing, are you stating that the brain, or indeed any physical system, cannot do anything that is not computable, reducible to a rote computation, an algorithm or program?

Again, what I'm trying to understand is: are you using the same definition of computation, or different definitions of computation? Are you disagreeing about what physical systems, including the brain, can do, or only about what to call it?

@NicoleCRust I agree with you, there's nothing happening there yet, mostly just decent people goofing off. I think it overall has a better design, so if it got past the invite-only stage and could build up a real critical mass in neuro (or whatever someone's thing is) I think it might be really good. But I don't know when invite-only will go away. Also I hear worries about it being owned by Jack and I don't really know if that's true or what its status is, but it's supposed to be designed so you can seamlessly migrate with all your posts, followers, and followees to any other instance.

The new NSF AI Institute for Artificial and Natural Intelligence (ARNI) seeks Postdoctoral Research Fellows, starting Summer or Fall 2023. Fellows will be based at Columbia U, NYC, but can work with ARNI researchers at multiple institutions. More info: https://www.engineering.columbia.edu/nsf-ai-institute-artificial-and-natural-intelligence
#neuroscience #ai #NeuroAi

Nominations are open (until May 11) for the Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, which is given either for lifetime contribution or for particularly noteworthy/impactful recent advances. Nominations encouraged! https://www.sfn.org/careers/awards/outstanding-career-and-research-achievements-awards/swartz-prize-for-theoretical-and-computational-neuroscience #neuroscience

@NicoleCRust I'm not a visual person, i think i have aphantasia (inability to form mental visual images), and i don't have such vivid visual memories. In one case when i was talking with people, i remember where i was, leaning on a desk, and the arrangement of other people in the room, vaguely - not entirely certain who was where or even who was there. In other cases my memory is more of an internal mental experience, kind of seeing, or more accurately feeling or sensing, the suddenly understood relationships as spatial relationships and a sense of the whole thing kind of spinning backwards.

Terrible news, Chethan Pandarinath posted on Twitter that Krishna Shenoy has died. He had long been battling cancer. A huge leader in the field, developing BCI and unraveling motor cortical dynamics, and as kind, generous, and gentle a soul as you could hope to meet.

#neuroscience

@DrYohanJohn @bwyble @ekmiller @strangetruther @achristensen56 @NicoleCRust

How do you describe that pattern? Periodic but with a weaker continuous pattern across layer 6??

@DrYohanJohn @bwyble @ekmiller @strangetruther @achristensen56 @NicoleCRust

OK here's one example, from Jenny Lund and others, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/(SICI)1096-9861(19961223)376:4%3C614::AID-CNE9%3E3.0.CO;2-4

The did both anterograde and retrograde tracing from injections in prefrontal areas 9 and 46. Both intrinsic (within-area) projections and "associational" (to other pre-frontal areas) projections formed periodic patches or stripes, with a repeat spacing of about 780 microns for intrinsic connections; no significant differences were seen between structure/distribution of intrinsic vs associational projections, but they seem to have less data on associational and don't specifically state a repeat distance for them.

I attach an example figure. The figure legend reads "Fig. 6. Brightfield photomicrograph of four discrete intrinsic clusters of CtB-positive neurons (arrows) [KM: CTB is a retrograde tracer; they also did the same experiments with the same results with an anterograde tracer] distributed along the dorsal bank of the principal sulcus (PSI in area 46. All clusters arise from a single injection site near the area 9/46 border, which is located immediately to the left (medial) of the left edge of the micrograph. Clusters of anterogradely-labeled axons are also apparent coincident with neuron clusters. Scalebar = 200microns".

@DrYohanJohn @bwyble @ekmiller @strangetruther @achristensen56 @NicoleCRust

But do you know about the structure of within-area long-range horizontal connections in motor and frontal cortex? My memory is that these projections are periodic/patchy, but I am not remembering precisely what the paper(s) were or what areas they studied.

@bwyble @ekmiller @strangetruther @achristensen56 @NicoleCRust @DrYohanJohn

My vague memory is that it was seen in frontal areas. Not a trustworthy memory though. One of us should dig up those old papers. @DrYohanJohn does anatomy, maybe he could identify the papers, or ask Helen Barbas if she could?