Dean Buonomano

NSF and NIH suspend grants to UCLA Move follows Trump administration finding that school didn’t effectively combat antisemitism

It looks like all NSF/NIH grants to UCLA (including mine and all fundamental neuroscience grants) have been suspended.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Cutting funding for life-saving research has nothing to do with attacking antisemitism.

It has everything to do with attacking science, universities, and California.

And sadly, it is our health, our knowledge and our economy that will pay the price.

Every Scientific Empire Comes to an End America’s run as the premiere techno-superpower may be over.

www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

Critical read: As noted by a colleague, from the examples in this article, it is amazing how quickly German physics collapsed (and US exploded) after 1934. #academicsky, #neuroskyence , is there time and a route to prevent the collapse of research in the US?

Hey, I wrote a thing. I (and others) think that our sense of time and mental well-being are linked. Here are my thoughts on it. Thanks @psyche.co for the invite!

psyche.co/guides/how-t...

I don't disagree and I have data (now rather old but I bet still relevant) to support this.

loop.nigms.nih.gov/2011/06/prod...

JOB ALERT: Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Postdoc position in Osaka, Japan! Possible start in October 2025 (contact me ASAP), or from April 2026. PLEASE REPOST! #postdocjobs #neuroskyence #neuroscience #psychscisky #compneurosky #neurojobs 1/

Super fun chat with a fellow time enthusiast, @danfalk.bsky.social (author of In Search of Time).
(I gave a shout-out to what I believe to be the most mind blowing of the intrinsically mind blowing time-travel movie genre: Predestination)

STANFORD BIOSCIENCES AFFIRMATION** September 23, 2019 As I embark on my career as a scientist, I willingly pledge that: I will practice and support a scientific process that is based on logic, intellectual rigor, personal integrity, and an uncompromising respect for the truth; I will perform my professional activities and interactions with scientific integrity and respect for the field and my peers; I will acknowledge that science involves failures and can be frustrating, thus I will treat myself and my colleagues with kindness and compassion as we deal with temporary setbacks on the path to progress; I will acknowledge my role as an ambassador of science to the public, and will strive to be honest, respectful, and unbiased while engaging the public; I will never let the potential for personal recognition, profit or advancement cause me to act in a way that violates the public trust in science or in me as a scientist; I will foster a community that is inclusive of all and recognize that diversity cultivates innovation, creativity, and progress; I will acknowledge and honor the contributions of scientists who have preceded me and become a worthy role model deserving of respect by those who follow me; And I will always be cognizant that my work is for the advancement of knowledge and the benefit of all humanity and our world.

This is an excellent statement of scientific values that we should all strive to uphold. 🧪🧠🤖

Sharing from @suryaganguli.bsky.social , who said this is the Stanford Med affirmation that all their PhD grads sign. 1/

Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task This study explores the neural and behavioral consequences of LLM-assisted essay writing. Participants were divided into three groups: LLM, Search Engine, and Brain-only (no tools). Each completed thr...

Cool paper led by @nataliyakosmyna.bsky.social convincingly showing poorer retention when using LLMs for essays. But I wonder if any of the EEG effects can be accounted for by time-on-task? Eg do the effects hold if just the first 5’ (out of the 20’) of EEG are used?

arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

Does Anybody Really Know What Time Is? Yes, your brain does. It created it.

Physicists have a lot to say about time, but so do neuroscientists -- after all, it's the brain which in some sense creates time, and enables our remarkable capacity for "mental time travel." I spoke with neuroscientist @deanbuono.bsky.social for @nautil.us:
nautil.us/does-anybody... #science

Stable recurrent dynamics in heterogeneous neuromorphic computing systems using excitatory and inhibitory plasticity - Nature Communications Achieving the same robustness of biological networks in neuromorphic systems remains a challenge due to the variability in their analogue components. Here, the authors apply a biologically-plausible c...

Thanks to Maryada (@giacomoi.bsky.social lab)! Due to component variability it is hard to set the weights across neuromorphic devices. Using our crosshomeostatic learning rule, that governs all four weight classes, we drove neuromorphic RNNs into balanced E/I regimes.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Stable recurrent dynamics in heterogeneous neuromorphic computing systems using excitatory and inhibitory plasticity Nature Communications - Achieving the same robustness of biological networks in neuromorphic systems remains a challenge due to the variability in their analogue components. Here, the authors apply...

I'm extremely proud of the work of Maryada, Saray Soldado-Magraner and colleagues, in collaboration with @deanbuono.bsky.social which shows how their #cross-homeostatic #plasticity model enables analog #neuromorphic #circuits to produce stable recurrent dynamics on our chips!!!

rdcu.be/euiv2

The main reason I don't consider IIT to be a valid scientific theory, is:
1. IIT is new law of physics-some simple configurations of matter are conscious
2. Physics is an incomplete puzzle, but we cannot make up new laws wo verifying if the new piece fits with the others (I don't think it does).

Thank you for 17 years of fluffy memories. I'll miss you, but never forget you, my friend.

Opinion | Ken Jennings: Trivia and ‘Jeopardy!’ Could Save Our Republic

Nice piece by Ken Jennings

“But societies are built on facts, as we can see more clearly when institutions built on knowledge teeter. Inaccurate facts make for less informed decisions. Less informed decisions make for bad policy. Garbage in, garbage out.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/o...

Here Are the Nearly 2,500 Medical Research Grants Canceled or Delayed by Trump Some cuts have been starkly visible, but the country’s medical grant-making machinery has also radically transformed outside the public eye.

The Gutting of America’s Medical Research: Here Is Every Canceled or Delayed N.I.H. Grant www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

World Scientists Look Elsewhere as U.S. Labs Stagger Under Trump Cuts

“Much of U.S. power and influence is derived from our science and technology supremacy,”

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/w...

Another tragic consequence of Trump’s economic policy is that when we should be increasing taxes to prepare for an inevitable AI induced-spike in unemployment he is cutting social safety net programs for trillion dollar tax breaks to the rich.

New Study Reveals Economic Ripple Effects of Mass Shootings on Local Businesses BALTIMORE, MD, May 13, 2025 – As communities across the United States continue to confront the devastating toll of mass shootings, new research reveals a staggering economic dimension to these tragedi...

Among all the other horrors they create, mass shootings are also provably ... bad for business.

"Mass shootings result in an estimated $27 billion annual revenue loss for U.S. retailers."

www.informs.org/News-Room/IN...

Opinion | Harvard Derangement Syndrome

“To cripple the institutions that acquire and transmit knowledge is a tragic blunder and a crime against future generations.”

Harvard Derangement Syndrome www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/o...

America cannot long remain free, nor first among nations, if it becomes the kind of place where universities are dismantled because they don't align politically with the current head of the government.

A reduced ability to discriminate social from non-social touch at the circuit level may underlie social avoidance in autism - Nature Communications Social touch is critical for communication to impart emotions and intentions. However, certain autistic individuals experience aversion to social touch. Here, we used Neuropixels probes to record neur...

Really cool new science from the Portera-Cailliau lab on the neural circuit basis of social touch avoidance in a mouse model of Fragile X Syndrome. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

FAPESP recently announced two new calls to attract international researchers to São Paulo. Both opportunities include grant funding and scholarships, and could be interesting depending on career stage and plans. #neuroskyence #AcademicSky

Here is a quick summary of each:

9 Federally Funded Scientific Breakthroughs That Changed Everything

9 Federally Funded Scientific Breakthroughs That Changed Everything www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/s...

Systems consolidation reorganizes hippocampal engram circuitry Nature - A study shows that loss of memory precision associated with systems consolidation can be explained by neurogenesis-dependent reorganization of engram circuitry within the hippocampus over...

Sharing a new paper from the lab. This paper, led by Sangyoon Ko, represents a merging of two longstanding research themes in the lab-- adult neurogenesis and systems consolidation.

rdcu.be/el18q

A short thread follows for those interested.

1/n

Memorability shapes perceived time (and vice versa) - Nature Human Behaviour In this Article, Ma et al. show, across a series of experiments, that time and memorability (the probability of recalling a visual stimulus) mutually influence one another, suggesting that time is a f...

Excited and thrilled and humbled that our work is now out at Nature Human Behaviour linking Memorability with Time Perception! I hope you all find it of interest 🙂

Memorability shapes perceived time (and vice versa)

#academicsky #neuroskyence #psychscisky #science

Exploring Emotion Through Visual Perception—Dr. Edward A. Vessel What if the way we feel about an image, whether it is outdoor scenery, a city skyline, or a childhood photo, wasn't just about memory or mood but something deeper in how we see? For Dr. Edward A. Vess...

Our recent research published in PNAS is featured today in the Research and Innovation at City College (RICC) Newsletter. Thanks so much to the CCNY Office of Research @ccnyresearch.bsky.social for your support and interest!

thericc.com/exploring-em...

How cuts at the National Institutes of Health could impact Americans' health Cuts and layoffs to the National Institutes of Health threaten medical research around the U.S., agency insiders warn.

The National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, has fired 1,300 employees and cancelled more than $2 billion in federal research grants. https://cbsn.ws/4daiCrv

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081