Ben Fulcher

New preprint! Do you like ocean waves? We found similar waves on bacterial colonies! We found that this collective behavior, known as rippling, is nothing but surface waves on an active nematic. @princeton.edu @mpipks.bsky.social @ub.edu @icreacommunity.bsky.social

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

Finally got the job ad—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 🏖️🌮

Exciting new work from @lindenmp.bsky.social and friends!

Inferring intrinsic neural timescales using optimal control theory
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How do brain areas control each other? 🧠🎛️

✨In our NeurIPS 2025 Spotlight paper, we introduce a data-driven framework to answer this question using deep learning, nonlinear control, and differential geometry.🧵⬇️

GitHub - KieranOwens/tsdr: Time-series dimension reduction (TSDR) Time-series dimension reduction (TSDR). Contribute to KieranOwens/tsdr development by creating an account on GitHub.

And there's an open python repo with really clear and easy to read and code implementing the key methods:
github.com/KieranOwens/...

Take a look?! 👀

Kieran explains how all the methods can be understood through these conceptual groupings, derives new relationships between existing methods, and provides some case-study demonstrations/comparisons of how insanely well they can work on data

These powerful methods are underappreciated: A recent review of the field included *0* methods designed for time-series data, instead focusing on generic dimension reduction methods.

This paper assembles a diversity of >60 scientific methods for the first time, and unifies them across 7 categories.

New preprint! (by Kieran Owens)

Of interest to anyone who analyzes time-series data!:

"Time-series dimension reduction: a comprehensive review and conceptual unification of algorithms"

www.techrxiv.org/users/999518...

#timeseries #dimensionreduction #complexsystems

Congrats to Dr Caroline Wormell from the School of Mathematics and Statistics on their recently announced DECRA award "From chaos to clarity: reliable data-driven analysis of dynamical systems."

Copula-based analytical results of horizontal visibility graphs for correlated time series The visibility graph (VG) algorithm and its variants have been extensively studied in the time series analysis as they transform the time series into the network of nodes and links, enabling to charac...

Our new preprint is out in arXiv: Copula-based analytical results of horizontal visibility graphs for correlated time series arxiv.org/abs/2508.08934 This is from the collaboration with my undergraduate student Jeong-Min Lee.

Identifying statistical indicators of temporal asymmetry using a data-driven approach The dynamics of time-reversible systems are statistically indistinguishable when observed forward or backward in time. A rich literature of statistical methods to distinguish irreversible dynamics fro...

If you're interested in the statistics of time-irreversibility, and how they could be used to capture novel, interpretable properties from real-world time series, take a look:
arxiv.org/abs/2511.15991
(Code here: github.com/DynamicsAndN...)

The breath of comparison (of both methods and processes) also allowed us to demonstrate that all tested indices of irreversibility had weaknesses: i.e., we could always find an irreversibile process on which any given irreverisbility index will fail to detect irreversibility.

We found key families of algorithmic constructions that were could accurately index irreversibility: (i) generalized autocorrelation functions; (ii) symbolic sequences; and (iii) forecasting-derived metrics. Some recapitulate concepts studied previously but in isolation; others are novel directions

He we compared >6000 time-series metrics to index time reversibility from simulations of 35 different reversible and irreversible processes

Quantifying time reversibility from data is important because it connects to concepts in thermodynamics (entropy production of non-equilibrium systems) & constrains the system's generative mechanisms (by ruling out linear dynamics; cf. related concepts of non-Gaussianity & nonlinearity)

New preprint: "Identifying statistical indicators of temporal asymmetry using a data-driven approach"
arxiv.org/abs/2511.15991

_Can we statistically distinguish the forward- versus reverse-time dynamics of a system from a finite time series?_

YouTube video by Stuart0193 Fetal Brain Development: From 21 to 40 Weeks Gestation

In case anyone is interested, I've put that animation I made of brain development from 21-40 weeks GA on YouTube for your enjoyment/reference🤰👶🧠 Now you don't need to go to that other place anymore to find it 😁

youtu.be/C20GQ5CtVt0

Plus the code is now up!

github.com/StuartJO/Fet...

Preprint site arXiv is banning computer-science reviews: here’s why The repository is taking steps to tackle a surge in low quality, AI-generated content.

🍿

Preprint site arXiv is banning computer-science reviews: here’s why www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A "methods primer" article in the journal "BMJ Medicine", titled "Factors associated with: problems of using exploratory multivariable regression to identify causal risk factors"

We wrote an article explaining why you shouldn't put several variables into a regression model and report which are statistically significant - even as exploratory research. bmjmedicine.bmj.com/content/4/1/.... How did we do?

Just published in Nature Communications! Skye Gunasekaran has raised my expectations of UCSC undergraduate students impossibly high. You can direct all grading complaints to her. | Jason Eshraghian Just published in Nature Communications! Skye Gunasekaran has raised my expectations of UCSC undergraduate students impossibly high. You can direct all grading complaints to her.

Glad to share the publication of our #newpaper (aka #blueprint) :

> A Predictive Approach to Enhance Time-Series Forecasting

By Skye Gunasekaran, Assel Kembay, Hugo Ladret, Rui-Jie Zhu, myself, Omid Kavehei and Jason Eshraghian

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

#neuroscience #AI #prediction #time

Arousal as a universal embedding for spatiotemporal brain dynamics - Nature Reframing of arousal as a latent dynamical system can reconstruct multidimensional measurements of large-scale spatiotemporal brain dynamics on the timescale of seconds in mice.

Nature research paper: Arousal as a universal embedding for spatiotemporal brain dynamics

go.nature.com/4nMUgYz

random neuroimaging question: does anyone in bluesky-land have access to the loadings for neurosynth topics in schaefer 400 (yeo7) space? #neuroskyence @misicbata.bsky.social @richardfbetzel.bsky.social @borismontreal.bsky.social @sofievalk.bsky.social

Toward a unified taxonomy of information dynamics via Integrated Information Decomposition | PNAS Our ability to understand and control complex systems of many interacting parts remains limited. A key challenge is that we still do not know how b...

Finally published:
“Toward a unified taxonomy of information dynamics via Integrated Information Decomposition”
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

An information-theoretic framework to analyse complex multivariate dynamical processes ✨

Can a virus help uncover Turing patterns in nature? In this @commsbio.nature.com paper, researchers show how the tulip breaking virus triggers the expression of a pigment that can display a broad range of (observable) stripe patterns @philipcball.bsky.social
biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🎊Ain’t no party like a thesis submission party🎊

Honored to have submitted my PhD as a recipient of the Paulette Isabel Jones Career Development Award from The University of Sydney!

Thank you x1000000 to MVP supervisor @bendfulcher.bsky.social & co-supervisor @macshine.bsky.social 😊

This is what happens to successful authors. Caveat emptor.

Something similar happened (on much smaller scale) w/ one of my books. Amazon did nothing. Then a journalist reported on it. Amazon took down offending title.

I hope someone will report on this happening (much more blatantly) to Eric!

Illustration from Ana Yael https://www.anayael.com/

💤🧠🧪 New article! 🧪🧠💤

After years of effort led by @qualiastructure.bsky.social (Nao Tsuchiya and William Wong), Jenny Windt, Katja Valli, Valdas Noreika and @rherzoga.bsky.social, the Dream database is now published in @natcomms.nature.com

**A dream EEG and mentation database**
rdcu.be/eAwni

Geometry of neural dynamics along the cortical attractor landscape reflects changes in attention The brain is a complex dynamical system whose activity reflects changes in internal states, such as attention. While prior work has shown that large-scale brain activity reflects attention, the mechan...

Preprint⭐
Our attention changes over time and differs across contexts—which is reflected in the brain🧠 Fitting a dynamical systems model to fMRI data, we find that the geometry of neural dynamics along the attractor landscape reflects such changes in attention!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I've been thinking a lot about the preprint in terms of my own career. I grew up academically in computational labs. My papers were abstract early on and they only got more abstract as I progressed. The model was: find a new exciting mathematical tool. Apply it to brain imaging data. Write it up. 1/

Thanks mate! 😊