Naoshige Uchida

Wow, thank you, Sam!

🚨Our preprint is online!🚨

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning?

Read on to find out more! 🧵

Tonic dopamine and biases in value learning linked through a biologically inspired reinforcement learning model Nature Communications - Accurate future predictions are essential for guiding behavior, and disruptions in this process are associated with psychiatric disorders. Here the authors show that changes...

My first paper with @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social is finally out in @natcomms.nature.com ! rdcu.be/eACGf

TL;DR: asymmetric learning rates can be induced by shifts in tonic dopamine giving rise to pessimistic/optimistic biases in agents or animals undergoing reinforcement learning .

Competitive integration of time and reward explains value-sensitive foraging decisions and frontal cortex ramping dynamics Bukwich and Campbell et al. show that mice integrate elapsed time and reward intake, scaled by a latent patience variable, to decide when to leave virtual “patches.” Frontal cortex ramping activity ma...

Our paper on foraging is now published in Neuron! Read it here:

www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

This project was co-led by Michael Bukwich (not on Bluesky) and me, with major contributions from all co-authors. Huge thanks to the whole team!

Shun-ichi Amari | Kyoto Prize Shun-ichi Amari

This year's Kyoto Prize in Adavanced Technology goes to Dr. Shun-ichi Amari!

www.kyotoprize.org/en/laureates...

Multi-timescale reinforcement learning in the brain Nature - Individual dopaminergic neurons encode future rewards over distinct temporal horizons.

The paper can be accessed freely from rdcu.be/epsE6

Multi-timescale reinforcement learning in the brain - Nature Individual dopaminergic neurons encode future rewards over distinct temporal horizons.

Our work with Pablo Tano, @hyunggoo-kim.bsky.social Athar Malik, Alexandre Pouget and @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social exploring how dopamine neurons could enable multi-timescale reinforcement learning in the brain is out in @nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congratulations, Mark!!!

Congratulations, Matteo!!!

Congratulations, Ben!!!

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Mechanistic Interpretability: A Challenge Common to Both Artificial and Biological Intelligence - Kempner Institute In neuroscience, the past decade has witnessed major advances in our ability to record activity from the brain at both larger and finer scales. And yet, a mechanistic theory linking […]

New in the Deeper Learning blog: The Kempner’s Demba Ba explains his team’s recent Neuron paper on DUNL, a deep learning framework that tames the complexity of brain data.

bit.ly/KempnerDUNL

#AI #neuroscience #neuroskyence #ML

MCB’s Daniel Cardozo Pinto and Wendy Valencia Montoya Named 2025 Harvard Junior Fellows - Harvard University - Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology Harvard has named Daniel Cardozo Pinto and Wendy Valencia Montoya as two of its newest Junior Fellows, joining the prestigious Society of Fellows this year. They will begin […]

MCB’s Daniel Cardozo Pinto and Wendy Valencia Montoya Named 2025 Harvard Junior Fellows
www.mcb.harvard.edu/department/n... @dcardozopinto.bsky.social @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social @rachellegaudet.bsky.social @dulaclab.bsky.social @harvardoeb.bsky.social

Thank you!

Our new paper. Prospective contingency explains behavior and dopamine signals during associative learning. Collaboration with @neurovenki.bsky.social , @gershbrain.bsky.social

rdcu.be/ed1na

Decoding Learning: How Cues and Rewards Shape Behavior and Dopamine Signals - Harvard University - Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology A new study from Naoshige Uchida’s MCB lab provides new insight into how the brain processes contingency during associative learning. Published in Nature Neuroscience (PDF), the study demonstrates […]

Decoding Learning: How Cues and Rewards Shape Behavior and Dopamine Signals 🧠 🧪🧫 🧬 #science #neuro
www.mcb.harvard.edu/department/n... @saramatias.bsky.social @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social @neurovenki.bsky.social @harvardbrainsci.bsky.social @natureneuro.bsky.social @rachellegaudet.bsky.social

How can we design human-interpretable AI models to explain why neurons behave as they do?

Excited to share our work in collaboration with @saramatias.bsky.social, Hao Wu, Simona Temereanca, @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social, @neurovenki.bsky.social, @paulmasset.bsky.social, and Demba Ba @harvard.edu 1/21

Happy to be a part of it! Congratultations, Bahareh Tolooshams, Sara Matias, and the team! Thanks, Demba Ba and Paul Masset, for their leadership!

"Interpretable deep learning for deconvolutional analysis of neural signals"
authors.elsevier.com/c/1klDA3BtfH...

New Deep Learning Framework Reveals Hidden Structure in Neural Activity - Harvard University - Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology Understanding how neurons encode information is one of the most pressing challenges in neuroscience. A new study from a multidisciplinary team including MCB researchers and those from the […]

New Deep Learning Framework Reveals Hidden Structure in Neural Activity 🧠 #neuro #science
www.mcb.harvard.edu/department/n... @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social @saramatias.bsky.social @neurovenki.bsky.social @btolooshams.bsky.social @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social @harvardbrainsci.bsky.social

Our new study: Dopamine in the tail of the striatum facilitates avoidance in threat–reward conflicts. Congrats Iku-Tsutsui Kimura, Melissa Tian and others! Led by Mitsuko Watabe-Uchida. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Turing Award Goes to A.I. Pioneers Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton developed reinforcement learning, a technique vital to chatbots like ChatGPT.

Turing Award Goes to 2 Pioneers of Artificial Intelligence www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/t...

In our new paper @dulaclab.bsky.social, we investigated a fundamental question in social neuroscience: the origin of "sociality" (the need of being together) at the levels of behavior, neuron type, neural circuit and sensory modulation. (Detailed digest below) (1/7)
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our paper @dulaclab.bsky.social on social homeostasis is online today! We characterized “social rebound” behavior after social isolation in multiple mouse strains and revealed its neural basis. Intriguingly, soft touch plays a key role in satisfying social need!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Dulac Lab Identifies “Loneliness” Neurons in the Hypothalamus - Harvard University - Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology Loneliness is encoded in the brain in a way that closely resembles the neural architectures governing drives like thirst and hunger, researchers from the Dulac Lab report. A […]

Dulac Lab Identifies “Loneliness” Neurons in the Hypothalamus
🧠🧪🤖💡 #Science #Neuron
www.mcb.harvard.edu/department/n...
@dingliu.bsky.social @blogeman.bsky.social @dulaclab.bsky.social @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social @harvardbrainsci.bsky.social @neurovenki.bsky.social @rachellegaudet.bsky.social

A hypothalamic circuit underlying the dynamic control of social homeostasis Nature - New data on brain-wide circuits centred around two interconnected hypothalamic neuron populations provide significant mechanistic insights into the emergence of social need during social...

Our latest findings on social behavior circuits is out: how does the brain responds to social isolation? Terrific work by @dingliu.bsky.social et al. uncovering a circuit with similar neural architecture as physiological needs (hunger, thirst, sleep..). Detailed thread soon.
rdcu.be/ebo63

Boston, MA Location: Massachusetts State House 24 Beacon St, Boston, MA, United States Address: 24 Beacon St., Boston, MA, 02133 Time: 12-4 PM Important information: Please do not fully block the sidewalk, st…

Stand up for Science, on March 7th, in Boston. Please help spread this widely.

Here it is finally: Our mathematical methods book for life scientists! Aimed at advanced undergrads and beginning grad students, plus all those who want a deeper look at the math behind quantitative biology. @portugueslab.bsky.social.
1/3

Our new paper on distributional reinforcement learning.

Picture of Nature article, published 19 Feburary 2025, titled "An opponent striatal circuit for distributional reinforcement learning", with authors Adam S. Lowet, Qiao Zheng, Melissa Meng, Sara Matias, Jan Drugowitsch & Naoshige Uchida.

Excited that Adam Lowet's PhD work has been just been published in @nature.com at doi.org/10.1038/s415.... He has already posted about it on Twitter/X (see twitter.com/Adam_Lowet/s...), but let me re-post his thread here. 1/9

Congratulations, Paul (@paulmasset.bsky.social)!