PessoaBrain

Wonderful essay on brain metaphors

Looks amazing, thanks for sharing

If I never get a grant again I have to create a new career 😅

Did I?? 😅
I'll try to find it again

Working on a new book!
Basic intro to the brain for general readers (not a textbook).
The amazing thing about writing is learning part and realizing that the brain is way cooler than you thought. And so much more complex. How are we ever going to make sense of it??
Will take a few years to write...

A Drive to Survive is so good!

I don't think it's strictly a matter of "fake pearls", more what we come to see as shining. But I do see your point of course. But am skeptical about other professions, after all we're all human.

Photo of a sketch of a Neanderthal. The headline reads: Scientists Growing Neanderthal 'Minibrains', Will Connect Them to Crab Robots

Go for it. I don't even care any more.

You're going against the human impulse of valuing shiny things. "Mapping out" is made of dull material, it doesn't shine.
Sorry for the obnoxious reply but I'm not optimistic. Science is a human activity, hence...
I'm content to see "mapping out" featured in a good place and not hidden somewhere.

where do I sign up??

You have an award man, many of us can't say that!

Looks very cool. You say
"Second, to isolate how each pathway changes network function, we compare pairs of circuits which differ by one pathway."
Useful to look as pairwise and n-wise changes to understand possible "nonlinear" effects? I didn't go back to check if the combinatorics are feasible.

🚨New paper🚨

Neural manifolds went from a niche-y word to an ubiquitous term in systems neuro thanks to many interesting findings across fields. But like with any emerging term, people use it very differently.

Here, we clarify our take on the term, and review key findings & challenges rdcu.be/ex8hW

Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design by Winograd and Flores also made a strong impression in me eons ago. Should be required reading for current-generation AI folks :-)

was expecting 2/37 etc

Konrad you might be interested in reading Hubert Dreyfus' What Computers Can't Do as l well as the short book my Winograd/Flores. About abstracting knowledge into rules, etc. I read them decades ago (gasp) but they're likely relevant still. Maybe you've read them.

Interesting, deviates considerably from my view of science!

Interesting that you say physics is not finished. Some of us in other fields don't think "finished" makes sense in science as we're always "expanding the space of discovery" as many have pointed out. Is physics different in your view?

This is not about basic multiple realizability but about quite distinct ways of engaging the brain with relatively fixed simuli+task.

Konrad always has some simple explanation for my "profound" things. Hope you're right!

🤣
You could be right!

Not so fast Prof Kording, how about identical trials with the threat of shock but a good subset of them (>20%) evoke responses as if they were safe trials?

@amiyake.bsky.social some of these might be relevant

And this review paper:
Behavior needs neural variability
doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

Behavior can be decoded across the cortex when individual differences are considered Abstract. Group-level analyses have typically linked behavioral signatures to a constrained set of brain areas. Here, we show that two behavioral metrics—reaction time (RT) and confidence—can be decod...

direct.mit.edu/imag/article...

Brain signatures indexing variation in internal
processing during perceptual decision-making
www.cell.com/iscience/pdf...

Multiple brain activation patterns for the same perceptual decision-making task - Nature Communications Here, the authors show the brain uses multiple activation patterns to perform the same task. Even the default mode network, which is often inactive during focus, plays a role.

𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝘀𝗸/𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀?
Some papers suggesting that it can.
#neuroskyence
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This goes along with some studies reporting similar findings in other paradigms. I'll send links to these papers soon.

I'm hoping to have something submitted by end of August. What we find is that even the same threat stimulus leads to 2-3 classes of brain responses within an individual. The results are wild, as we get a "safety" response to threat of shock in >20% of the trials for many participants.

Eye puffs prompt separable sensory, affective brain responses in mice, people Post-puff brain state might not be an emotion, some researchers caution, but the protocol provides a cross-species approach to study emotions.

Can we study emotion by using eye puffs that are "irritating"?
Check this Transmitter piece about the original paper in Science and some views for an against.
@thetransmitter.bsky.social
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/emotion-proc...