Elliot Smith

No way! 😏

I'm recruiting grad students!! 🎓

The CoDec Lab @ NYU (codec-lab.github.io) is looking for PhD students (Fall 2026) interested in computational approaches to social cognition & problem solving 🧠

Applications through Psych (tinyurl.com/nyucp) are due Dec 1. Reach out with Qs & please repost! 🙏

Sometimes I think about how from 1935-1975ish, Bell Labs produced an insane amount of revolutionary science and technology, including 11 Nobel Prizes, the transistor, UNIX, C, the laser, the solar cell, information theory, etc. The secret? Provide scientists with ample, steady, no-strings funding.

Minimally invasive implantation of scalable high-density cortical microelectrode arrays for multimodal neural decoding and stimulation - Nature Biomedical Engineering A 1,024-channel microelectrode array is delivered to the brain cortex via a minimally invasive incision in the skull and dura, and allows recording, stimulation and neural decoding across large portions of the brain in porcine models and human neurosurgical patients.

Precision Neuroscience published their high-density ECoG in Nature Biomed. Eng.

The startup shows a 1,024-channel grid implanted through a cortical slit in pigs, and intraoperative neural recordings and stimulation in five humans at sub-mm resolution.

#neuroskyence @precisionneuro.bsky.social

Awesome! Congrats, Marcin! 👏👏🙌

1/3: What happens in the #brain when moving your eyes? Using closed-loop #EyeTracking with simultaneous intracranial #EEG in humans, we found that: *Saccades boost visual responses but reduce network connectivity. *Excitability changes and visual features are coded along the saccade–fixation cycle.

Diagram showing three ways to control brain activity with a visual prosthesis. The goal is to match a desired pattern of brain responses. One method uses a simple one-to-one mapping, another uses an inverse neural network, and a third uses gradient optimization. Each method produces a stimulation pattern, which is tested in both computer simulations and in the brain of a blind participant with an implant. The figure shows that the neural network and gradient methods reproduce the target brain activity more accurately than the simple mapping.

👁️🧠 New preprint: We demonstrate the first data-driven neural control framework for a visual cortical implant in a blind human!

TL;DR Deep learning lets us synthesize efficient stimulation patterns that reliably evoke percepts, outperforming conventional calibration.

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

That’s beautiful 🥹 congrats!

Huge congrats!!!

This sounds super relevant. Which conference is that? Couldn’t find it with a cursory search

Computational Properties of the Prefrontal Cortex The term “prefrontal” appears to have been coined in the first volume of Brain in the context of describing the curious case of Phineas Gage, inspired by the skull anatomy of fish (Girard, 1851; Anon,...

Really excited that our special collection generated from the last CPPC conference is in the Journal of Neuroscience. Check out this article for a preview of all the great work featured.

w/ @erinlrich.bsky.social @narayananlab.bsky.social and Jeremy Seamans

www.jneurosci.org/content/45/3...

Looks awesome, congrats!

🚨New preprint alert🚨
We used closed-loop optogenetics to causally test the importance of inhibitory spike timing in network function and found that manipulating PV+ cell theta phase locking in the dentate gyrus can shift seizure susceptibility (both ways!)

New preprint from the lab! 🧠
Led by Juliana Trach, w/ Sophia Ou

Using fMRI, we discovered evidence for time-sensitive reward prediction errors (RPEs) in the human cerebellum.

Builds on, and extends, recent work in both rodents and NHPs

Like who?

The whole human brain def doesn’t encode movement though, 💯

Different evolutionary and developmental factors. I’m a proponent for distributed reps and coding, but have def seen human neuronal reps specific for particular brain regions too.

Totally. I don’t mean to discount this obviously great work. I just mean that overtraining likely strengthens and broadens reps, but I don’t know and not sure one can really generalize. Also mouse and human brains are likely pretty different with different micro to macro anatomy and …

Way less variation across brain areas than in primates, no?

Agreed, but until we have widespread neuropixels in the human brain we have to rely on the innumerable evidence for functional specialization, ranging from cytoarchitecture (not relevant for mice) to lesion studies.

🤝

*in overtrained mice

A scorpion under UV light

A slot canyon with a black dog

A dog on the edge of a mesa

The edge of an eroding mesa against a forest backdrop

Here’s some high desert happiness for your TL:

Check out @tifenpan.bsky.social 's just published paper! we demonstrate how to use RNNs to infer latent variables from cognitive models, even when standard methods don't work easily.

Discovering cognitive strategies with tiny recurrent neural networks - Nature Modelling biological decision-making with tiny recurrent neural networks enables more accurate predictions of animal choices than classical cognitive models and offers insights into the underlying cog...

Thrilled to see our TinyRNN paper in @nature! We show how tiny RNNs predict choices of individual subjects accurately while staying fully interpretable. This approach can transform how we model cognitive processes in both healthy and disordered decisions. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

🚨We believe this is a major step forward in how we study hippocampus function in healthy humans.

Using novel behavioral tasks, fMRI, RL & RNN modeling, and transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS), we demonstrate the causal role of hippocampus in relational structure learning.

Congrats man!!

“One way to fight a profit-driven system that treats people as disposable is to instead treat people as redeemable. Solidarity means not writing anyone off completely, not throwing anyone away. It holds out hope that systems & individuals can change."

Officially out in paperback as of yesterday.

while I'm disappointed to not receive the @onemindorg.bsky.social rising star award again, I'm grateful that I don't have to listen to Train at their music festival... 😂 Congrats to the awardees!

A high alpine vista

Two backpackers walking in front of a mountain

A mountain goat in the mountains

Two mountain goats looking down on the photographer

Here’s some high alpine happiness (type II) for your TL