Neurofrontiers @neurofrontiers@qoto.org

Alrighty folks, Skype a Scientist is doing alright. 1,130 classrooms signed up this fall. That's...ok!

Buuuut we have so many scientists twiddling their thumbs waiting to get matched.

SO!

Do the thing humans are built to do. Connect with people! Tell an educator you know we exist! Send them this picture! Send them a link! Send them both!

Folks can sign up to be matched on our website here https://www.skypeascientist.com/sign-up.html

My expert advice?

Do NOT volunteer for this.

Unless you want to surrender your grey matter to a hideously insecure man baby narcissist who will try to flood your synapses with conspiracy theories and ads for cryptocurrency. In which case, you do you, I guess

Not many editorials make me laugh out loud… but this one did https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-023-02036-0

"The notion that all complex processes could be understood in terms of underlying simple universal laws is indeed an article of faith, but one which has been put increasingly to the test [...]. Previously we have tended to sidestep problems arising from complexity; we could argue that these problems could be dealt with if necessary, but since there were many simpler and more tractable problems at hand, we would concern ourselves with those."
Rosen (1977) http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03081077708934768

@cogsci

STOP SAVING DAYLIGHT

* CLOCKS WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE CHANGED TWICE A YEAR

* YEARS OF 'SAVING' yet NO NET GAIN OF DAYLIGHT

* Sunset keeps getting earlier by a few minutes per day, which is sad but we can adjust to it, but then BAM we are all supposed to change the clocks so that it's suddenly A FULL HOUR EARLIER and it's PITCH DARK AFTER WORK what the hell.

"Hello I would like my saved daylight back please"

They have played us for absolute fools.

Integrated information theory as pseudoscience?

Some thoughts about recent discussions on IIT and accusations of pseudoscience.

https://selfawarepatterns.com/2023/09/17/integrated-information-theory-as-pseudoscience/
#consciousness #philosophy #PhilosophyOfMind #PhilosophyOfScience #neuroscience #IIT #IntegratedInformationTheory

What if consciousness is just epiphenomenal, a projection of other primary phenomena that we misattribute to being primary itself?

If so, we’d all feel really stupid spending so much time trying to explain it.

#consciousness

OMG this thread is wild!

https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@badlogic/111071396799790275

New blog post just dropped: "The thing about epistemic humility:" http://www.johannesjaeger.eu/blog/the-thing-about-epistemic-humility.

Know when to be humble, and (even more importantly) when to stand up with conviction and call out people's bullshit.

If you have a WordPress-powered blog, you can turn it into a Fediverse server and people will be able to follow the blog from Mastodon etc.

More info on how to do this here:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/wordpress-turning-your-blog-into-a-fediverse-server/

This works through the AcitvityPub for WordPress plug-in, which has just been updated to version 1.0:

➡️ https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/

The plug-in is by @pfefferle in association with #Automattic, one of the major players behind WordPress itself.

#WordPress #Fediverse #FediTips #ActivityPub

The SpikeInterface project is recruiting a Software Engineer to develop automated spike sorting tools. This is a great opportunity to work with theoretical and experimental neuroscientists innovating open source software for systems neuroscience. Will be based in Edinburgh - vibrant neuroscience community and a fantastic place to live.

SpikeInterface: https://tinyurl.com/spikeint

How to apply: https://tinyurl.com/yk8ymc35

Please boost so we can get the word out to as widely as possible.

I keep seeing people saying they are happy to use AI text generators as sources of factual information, because they're confident that when the thing generates an inaccurate answer they'll easily spot it.

Speaking from my experience of 20+ years of professional fact-checking: the errors you can spot easily are not the ones you need to worry about.

Have Attention Spans Been Declining? https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Pweg9xpKknkNwN8Fx/have-attention-spans-been-declining
A lack of long-term studies means we can't tell whether #attention spans have actually declined. Yet, reviewing related research indicates that individual attention spans might indeed have been declining

I’ve been creating a montage of all the #LeavingAcademia folk on Twitter for a talk.

1) My heart 💔
2) Notice anything?

Your weekend read is here! 😊

Advancing Neuroscientific Understanding of Brain-Behavior Relationship: A Conversation with Nicole C. Rust (@NicoleCRust ), a Professor and brain researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

https://awaisaftab.substack.com/p/advancing-neuroscientific-understanding

I've spent a lot of time over the last couple years thinking about #sciComm, both in sharing research with the public and other scientists.

Doing research for my latest Penn NeuroKnow post debunking common myths about the brain was fascinating as I traced through where several of these myths originated. Oftentimes they start with real #neuroscience results that get twisted into something overly generalized or not quite accurate. In some cases, as with the "tongue map" myth, we have a pretty clear idea of what single decision or moment in time caused the confusion, but in other cases it's less clear how we got to such widespread misconceptions.

In my post I briefly talked about how anyone can help stop this cycle of miscommunication, but I'm eager to hear other opinions about where the responsibility to prevent future neuromyths lies and what we as neuroscientists can do to stop them.

You can read my post, "Neuro MythBusters: The truth behind 10 common myths about your brain", here: https://pennneuroknow.com/2023/09/05/neuro-mythbusters-the-truth-behind-10-common-myths-about-your-brain/

Everybody go update your iPhones.

The new 0-click vuln exploited by NSO Group is sent via a malicious image in iMessage.

https://citizenlab.ca/2023/09/blastpass-nso-group-iphone-zero-click-zero-day-exploit-captured-in-the-wild/

Do you like it when browsers share any function of your browsing history with every random website you visit to target Ads? Well, get ready, Google Chrome pushes ahead with targeted ads based on your browser history https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/06/google_privacy_popup_chrome/ #privacy #security

Is biophysical modelling in neuroscience dead?

Note I do this all the time. Colleague suggested that however yes, it is dead, mainly due to the findings of Eve Marder et al: that neurons properties are massively degenerate. So no point in modelling various ion channel dynamics in detail.

I have to admit this keeps me awake at night wondering if I should pack it all in and just boot up a convolutional neural network, like the rest of computational neuroscientists seem to be doing these days.