Samuel Eckmann

Heterogeneous plasticity of amygdala interneurons in associative learning and extinction - Nature Communications In this study, the authors uncover how diverse inhibitory interneurons in the amygdala flexibly contribute to fear and safety learning, revealing a key role for inhibition in emotional memory and adap...

Out now: Favila, Capece Marsico et al. 2025, Nature Communications: Using longitudinal deep-brain imaging, we report that amygdala interneurons exhibit complex and heterogeneous plasticity during associative learning, at both the single-cell and population level.
👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Neuroscience needs engineers—for more reasons than you think Adopting an engineering mindset will help the field focus its research priorities.

Many of our big insights into brain function come from trying to mimic it, writes @timothyoleary.bsky.social. This lesson should guide how we organize research programs.

www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...

#neuroskyence

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Now that Affinity is fully free I think there’s a solid opportunity for academia to let go of Inkscape and get serious about designing good figures 💁🏻‍♂️

www.affinity.studio/download

Cortical glutamatergic and GABAergic inputs support learning-driven hippocampal stability Flexibility and stability of neuronal ensembles are crucial features of brain function. Little is known about how these properties of local circuits are influenced by long-range inputs. We show that l...

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Sensory expectations shape neural population dynamics in motor circuits Nature - Experiments with human volunteers and macaques show that expectations produced by probabilistic cueing of future sensory inputs shape motor circuit dynamics in order to increase the...

Thrilled that our paper is out today in Nature!
www.nature.com/articles/s4...

What makes PhD students happy? Good supervision Supervisors who invest in positive mentoring relationships with their PhD candidates also reap the benefits for their own research.

"Even short, regular check-ins can make a difference. Time spent helping students to solve problems, or simply asking how a project is going, will pay dividends. It also saves time later by catching small problems before they become big ones"

nature.com/articles/d41...

#JNeurosci: Kashefi et al. dissociate between the “what” and “how” components of motor sequence learning and provides evidence for the development of motoric sequence representations that guide optimal movement execution.
https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0299-25.2025

Neuromorphic is dead. Long live neuromorphic In this NeuroView, Giacomo Indiveri discusses the origins and evolution of neuromorphic engineering, reflects on recent shifts toward digital and AI-c…

Neuromorphic Computing, NeuroAI, Computational Neuroscience

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Travel awards are available for undergraduate students looking to attend #Cosyne25! The application is short, and the deadline is Nov 12. @cosynemeeting.bsky.social

Application: shorturl.at/6NEyk

More info: www.cosyne.org/travel-grants

(1/2)

GABAergic circuits reflect different requirements for sensory integration in postnatal mouse neocortex Information transfer in mammalian cerebral cortex is dependent on GABAergic interneuron circuits that are widely assumed to be uniform across the neoc…

A rather 'unique' paper from our lab is online in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social now. Unique in the sense that I don't think anyone else will be rushing to optotag cortical interneurons in the early postnatal brain... because it is nigh on impossible!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Interested in doing a Ph.D. to work on building models of the brain/behavior? Consider applying to graduate schools at CU Anschutz:
1. Neuroscience www.cuanschutz.edu/graduate-pro...
2. Bioengineering engineering.ucdenver.edu/bioengineeri...

You could work with several comp neuro PIs, including me.

1/
🚨 New preprint! 🚨

Excited and proud (& a little nervous 😅) to share our latest work on the importance of #theta-timescale spiking during #locomotion in #learning. If you care about how organisms learn, buckle up. 🧵👇

📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
💻 code + data 🔗 below 🤩

#neuroskyence

Recurrent pattern completion drives the neocortical representation of sensory inference - Nature Neuroscience Neurons that respond emergently to illusory contours drive pattern completion in V1. Pattern completion in lower cortical areas may therefore mediate perceptual inference by selectively reinforcing ac...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

« Diverse calcium dynamics underlie place field formation in hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells. »

A fundamental study now published @elife.bsky.social

elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Didn’t want to hijack someone else’s thread, but also: what’s the alternative? Sure, evolution produces sufficient not optimal solutions. Cool. How do we model that? Or if you don’t care about modeling, what predictions does that make that we can test experimentally?

Eliezer Yudkowsky, quoted in the NY Times.

For anyone who has followed the "AI Safety" / "Less Wrong" discussions, this is...well, something.

M1, not so low-d after all:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Motor cortex flexibly deploys a high-dimensional repertoire of subskills Skilled movement often requires flexibly combining multiple subskills, each requiring dedicated control strategies and underlying computations. How the motor system achieves such versatility remains u...

Of potential interest to those keen on motor control and/or multi-task networks. Congrats to Elom and Eric.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Everything Everywhere ...

Hippocampal theta sweeps indicate goal direction https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.21.671551v1

true, but also easier said than done 😬

„it is important that the theorist’s
tendency towards reductionism does not cloud out the complexity
of the living brain“

YouTube video by Gerstner Lab From Spikes To Rates

Is it possible to go from spikes to rates without averaging?

We show how to exactly map recurrent spiking networks into recurrent rate networks, with the same number of neurons. No temporal or spatial averaging needed!

Presented at Gatsby Neural Dynamics Workshop, London.

Thrilled to share our new Adesnik lab paper!!
Using holography in excitatory & inhibitory neurons, we reveal how a single cortical circuit can both complete and cancel predictable sensory activity, sharpening representations
📄https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.02.668307v1
🧵

Brain Surfaces of 70 primate species

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To predict the behaviour of a primate, would you rather base your guess on a closely related species or one with a similar brain shape? We looked at brains & behaviours of 70 species, you’ll be surprised!

🧵Thread on our new preprint with @r3rt0.bsky.social , doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Open Call for Expressions of Interest in Max Planck Directorships: Expressions of interest can be submitted until 31 October 2025.

Director at Max Planck - a unique position! The Open Call for Expressions of Interest in Max Planck Directorships is open now and can be submitted by the 31st of October 2025. ➡️ mpg.de/directors - Please share the Open Call among potential candidates.

Feature-specific inhibitory connectivity augments the accuracy of cortical representations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.02.668307v1

What do you have in mind as evidence that speaks against this? Generally broadly tuned inhibition?

'Unlike in artificial neural networks, learning in biological networks is thought to modify synaptic weights but not signs ... here, we demonstrate experience-dependent sign switching at glutamate and GABA co-releasing synapses'

This is a nice history lesson on inhibitory plasticity. Not sure I agree about the present and future though ;)