Rui Ponte Costa's Avatar

Rui Ponte Costa

@somnirons.bsky.social

Computational neuroscientist bringing machine and neural learning closer together [Oxford NeuroAI] @ox.ac.uk @oxforddpag.bsky.social ๐Ÿ‡ต๐Ÿ‡น๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง๐ŸŒณ neuralml.github.io www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/neuroai

1,837 Followers  |  261 Following  |  47 Posts  |  Joined: 10.01.2024  |  1.9377

Latest posts by somnirons.bsky.social on Bluesky

We're hiring! Fully-funded PhD positions in Human & Machine Intelligence (Neuro & AI) at Boston College How does the brain support adaptive decision making in the real world? Recent advances in AI have provided us with models that rival humans on challenging naturalistic tasks and can serve as starting ...

We're hiring! Fully-funded PhD positions in Human & Machine Intelligence (Neuro & AI) at Boston College! ๐Ÿง ๐Ÿค–

Apply by *Dec 15*!

More info here: momchiltomov.com/news/2025/12...

03.12.2025 17:23 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 20    ๐Ÿ” 11    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 2
University Assistant/Associate Professor in Control Theory and Systems Biology Applications are invited for a University Assistant/Associate Professorship in the broad area of Control Theory and Systems Biology. The successful candidate will join the Control Group

We are opening a FACULTY POSITION (tenure track, permanent) in the University of Cambridge at the interface of control and biology, interpreted broadly. Theorists and wet lab quantitative biologists with backgrounds in control, EE, applied math, ... apply by Jan 28!

www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/univers...

03.12.2025 12:19 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 37    ๐Ÿ” 38    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 1

Itโ€™s a shame to see you go. You brought such energy and positivity to CompNeuro and neuroscience at Bristol! Good luck with the next steps!

03.12.2025 10:26 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 4    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Finally got the job adโ€”looking for 2 PhD students to start spring next year:

www.gao-unit.com/join-us/

If comp neuro, ML, and AI4Neuro is your thing, or you just nerd out over brain recordings, apply!

I'm at neurips. DM me here / on the conference app or email if you want to meet ๐Ÿ–๏ธ๐ŸŒฎ

03.12.2025 09:36 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 64    ๐Ÿ” 44    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 4

It feels surreal, but my 3+ years at @bristoluni.bsky.social are finished. It was a wonderful experience, and I had great fortune in the students who chose to work with me, the mentors and colleagues (academic and professional services) I had.

02.12.2025 15:59 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 19    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2    ๐Ÿ“Œ 1
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How I contributed to rejecting one of my favorite papers of all time I believe we should talk about the mistakes we make.

How I contributed to rejecting one of my favorite papers of all times, Yes, I teach it to students daily, and refer to it in lots of papers. Sorry. open.substack.com/pub/kording/...

02.12.2025 01:27 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 112    ๐Ÿ” 28    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 9
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A remarkable journey of resilience and transformation, from the chaotic corridors of group homes to the halls of Columbia and Stanford, EMERGENCE is a coming-of-age tale where heartbreak and humor meet the scientific wonder of modern artificial intelligence.

๐Ÿ”— Preorder: tinyurl.com/fzcxb5ea

17.11.2025 18:08 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 53    ๐Ÿ” 11    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Maybe we should write a joint perspective on this to clarify the differences and similarities :)

29.11.2025 15:39 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 6    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Thanks both! L5 encoder can learn in different ways (as we show). We can do EMA as in JEPA. Also the L2/3>L5 input is not important. Both these points were only added for biological plausibility. The fundamental principle of JEPA is the same: a predictor (L2/3) learns to match a target encoder (L5).

29.11.2025 15:36 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 5    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Cool work! I should clarify that our cortical SSL model (Nejad 2025) also predicts in the latent space like JEPA. Indeed the mapping to JEPA is relative straigtforward (L4 and L5 are encoders and L2/3 is the predictive network).

29.11.2025 08:38 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 7    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

A beautiful summary of our paper! Thank you @neurosock.bsky.social

28.11.2025 07:58 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 37    ๐Ÿ” 9    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Brains have many pathways / subnetworks but which principles underlie their formation?

In our #NeurIPS paper lead by Jack Cook we identify biologically relevant inductive biases that create pathways in brain-like Mixture-of-Experts models๐Ÿงต

#neuroskyence #compneuro #neuroAI
arxiv.org/abs/2506.02813

21.11.2025 12:01 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 32    ๐Ÿ” 8    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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In next #BrAInWorldsJournalClub, denizkumral.bsky.social presents the work of @dabalpedamonti.bsky.social, @mohintasamia.bsky.social & @somnirons.bsky.social in Nat Commun 2025: doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-64591-9 โœจJoin @ilka-diester.bsky.social & @mschoenauer.bsky.social for an inspiring discussion๐Ÿ’ก

17.11.2025 13:28 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 4    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

Are you looking to do independent research related to machine learning and/or data science? Want to get some teaching experience too? Apply to be a faculty fellow at the Center for Data Science at New York University! Positions are for two years. apply.interfolio.com/174686

21.10.2025 14:28 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 49    ๐Ÿ” 35    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 1
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Subsecond dopamine fluctuations do not specify the vigor of ongoing actions Nature Neuroscience - Liu and colleagues show that the vigor (that is, speed and amplitude) of dexterous movements is not controlled by ongoing fluctuations in extracellular dopamine within the...

Delighted to see this finally out: rdcu.be/eO9oW
We tested whether brief striatal dopamine release events influence the vigor of skilled movements. Despite popular belief, we did not find any evidence linking rapid dopamine dynamics to motor vigor on a moment-by-moment basis.

10.11.2025 15:43 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 74    ๐Ÿ” 24    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 9    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Fellows Positions | Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory CSHL Simons Fellow in NEUROSCIENCE Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) is seeking to fill a Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Fellow position in the area of NEUROSCIENCE (experimental and/or computationa...

Apply to become a CSHL-Simons Fellow in Neuroscience!

Run your own lab, pursue bold ideas, join a highly collaborative community!

All areas including experimental or computational neuro, including NeuroAI & systems

PhD required; โ‰ค~1 yr postdoc

www.cshl.edu/about-us/car...

24.10.2025 19:16 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 68    ๐Ÿ” 48    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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How do neural dynamics in motor cortex interact with those in subcortical networks to flexibly control movement? Iโ€™m beyond thrilled to share our work on this problem, led by Eric Kirk @eric-kirk.bsky.social with help from Kangjia Cai!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

23.06.2025 12:28 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 79    ๐Ÿ” 26    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 3    ๐Ÿ“Œ 1

Multiple BBSRC funded PhD projects available via SWBio

with Paul Chadderton looking at cerebellum bpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.bristo...

with Denize Atan, Zaf Bashir Marc Goodfellow & Mike Ashby
bpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.bristo...

Please get in touch if you are interested in either project.

05.11.2025 14:17 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 2    ๐Ÿ” 2    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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3 Postdoctoral Research Fellows Champalimaud Foundation (Fundaรงรฃo D. Anna de Sommer Champalimaud e Dr.

๐ŸšจJob alert๐Ÿšจ

The lab has up to *3 postdoc openings* for comp systems neuroscientists interested in describing and manipulating neural population dynamics mediating behaviour

This is part of a collaborative ARIA grant "4D precision control of cortical dynamics"

euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/383909

04.11.2025 17:11 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 77    ๐Ÿ” 52    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2    ๐Ÿ“Œ 1
A figure showing a range of neural network architectures. 

From Ghosh & Goodman, 2025, bioRxiv.

A figure showing a range of neural network architectures. From Ghosh & Goodman, 2025, bioRxiv.

Interested in #neuroscience + #AI and looking for a PhD position?

I can support your application @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social

โœ… Check your eligibility (below)
โœ… Contact me (DM or email)

UK nationals: www.imperial.ac.uk/life-science...

Otherwise: www.imperial.ac.uk/study/fees-a...

04.11.2025 09:47 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 19    ๐Ÿ” 8    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Universities should be more ambitious in the climate transition, according to The Young Academy - De Jonge Akademie News

Proud to share our manifesto - with a vision and concrete steps towards just sustainability transitions in Dutch academia!

With @rogierk.bsky.social, De Jonge Akademie, Green Young Academy

www.dejongeakademie.nl/en/news/3148...

04.11.2025 11:43 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 12    ๐Ÿ” 3    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Led by @dabalpedamonti.bsky.social @mohintasamia.bsky.social in collaboration with Hugo Malagon-Vina and Stephane Ciocchi.

03.11.2025 10:20 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 2    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Hippocampus supports multi-task reinforcement learning under partial observability - Nature Communications Neural mechanisms underlying reinforcement learning in naturalistic environments are not fully understood. Here authors show that reinforcement learning (RL) agents with hippocampal-like recurrence, u...

How does the brain find its way in realistic environments? ๐Ÿง  Using deep RL and neural data, we show that hippocampal-like networks support navigation, learning, and generalisation in partially observable environmentsโ€”mirroring real animal behaviour. Now out:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroAI

03.11.2025 10:20 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 61    ๐Ÿ” 14    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2    ๐Ÿ“Œ 2

A cool summary of our paper!

31.10.2025 07:40 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 20    ๐Ÿ” 2    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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A core function of cortex is predicting what happens next given the world's state.

This recent paper from Oxford shows how cortical layers may use a delay trick to learn to predict.

A simple illustration can explain the idea.

A๐Ÿงตwith my toy model and notes:

#neuroskyence #compneuro #NeuroAI

09.10.2025 08:03 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 32    ๐Ÿ” 10    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 6

Thanks for this beautiful description of our paper!

31.10.2025 07:39 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Apply to the new CSHL grad program in BioAI/neuroAI!

(Masters degree or equivalent required in a quantitative area such as computer science, physics, mathematics, or engineering)

www.cshl.edu/phd-program/...

22.10.2025 23:59 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 29    ๐Ÿ” 15    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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EPFL AI Center and Swiss AI Initiative Postdoctoral Fellowships The 2nd call is now open with a deadline for submissions of 3 November (17.00 CET)!Applications are encouraged from researchers at the postdoctoral level with a keen interest in collaborative, interdi...

Applications open for postdoc fellowships at the @epfl-ai-center.bsky.social, deadline Nov 3. www.epfl.ch/research/fun.... Great opportunity to work with our world class faculty; the fellowship is set up for collaboration between multiple labs, including my #NeuroAI group ๐Ÿค–๐Ÿง ๐Ÿงช

14.10.2025 07:26 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 13    ๐Ÿ” 2    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 1
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A study led by Cina Aghamohammadi is now out in โ€ช@natcomms.nature.comโ€ฌ! We developed a mathematical framework for partitioning spiking variability, which revealed that spiking irregularity is nearly invariant for each neuron and decreases along the cortical hierarchy.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

12.10.2025 00:42 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 71    ๐Ÿ” 24    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Come do a postdoc at the Wu Tsai Institute!

WTI fellows have freedom to work with anyone at the institute, and preference is given to applicants who want to work on interdisciplinary projects with multiple faculty mentors.

If youโ€™re interested to work with me, please reach out!

08.10.2025 12:50 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 20    ๐Ÿ” 13    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 1

@somnirons is following 20 prominent accounts