Serdar Akkol, MD PhD

Bounded Alignment: What (Not) To Expect from AGI Agents On July 2, I presented a paper entitled, “Position Paper: Bounded Alignment: What (Not) To Expect From AGI Agents” at the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN’2025) in Rome. Though...

Quite thoughtful questions and answers on the way to AGI. For AGI to be "general", it needs to be grounded in physical systems and to interact with environment. And this will not always give results we want. Just like raising a child. @barbarikon.bsky.social
aliminai.substack.com/p/bounded-al...

A summary of NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya's comments during his visit to UAB today for a town hall style presentation:

-Important for scientific work addressing our nation's health problems to be done in the same communities where those problems are concentrated

Time for Education and Research in Academic Neurology | Neurology

Words of wisdom from Dr. Kimford Meador on changing landscape of research and education in the academic centers!
"Time for Education and Research in Academic Neurology"
www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/...

🚨 New Preprint 🚨

Targeting intracranial electrical stimulation (ES) to network regions defined within individuals causes network-level effects

By Cyr et al.

***
Q: Can we use individualized network maps from precision fMRI to modulate a targeted network via intracranial ES?

A: Yes!

🧵:

🔥Damn. Tour de force.

How does the human brain process the continuous world around us and transform it into distinct memories? Our latest research, recently published in Science Advances @science.org, uncovers how brain waves called high frequency oscillations (HFOs) may support this amazing feat! (1/n)

#neurojobs

Our oscillations consensus paper is finally out as a preprint 🤩 thanks to everyone involved
arxiv.org/abs/2507.15639

🧠 ⚡️ Preprint alert ⚡️ 🧠

I️n the most comprehensive review of DBS in epilepsy, with 124 studies, 1,210 patients, and 20 anatomical targets we map where stimulation works best and why.

Deep Brain Stimulation for Epilepsy: Optimal Targeting and Clinical Outcomes
www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Let Our Patients Sleep | Neurology Clinical Practice

www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/...
"Number of vital checks to result in one urgent action was 730. If vitals were normal during the day, this number was 1856." 😱 Commentary from Dr. Jobst on Ellis et al.

🎉 Congrats to the 2025 AES Early Career Fellowship Awardees!
We're proud to support 26 rising stars in epilepsy research with $1.53M in funding across basic, translational, and clinical science.
Learn how AES supports the future of epilepsy research: aesnet.org/research-fun...

#neurojobs

#neurojobs

Movie-watching evokes ripple-like activity within events and at event boundaries Nature Communications - The neural processes involved in memory formation for realistic experiences remain poorly understood. Here, the authors found that ripple-like activity in the human...

🧠 Paper out!

We investigated how hippocampal and cortical ripples support memory during movie watching. We found that:

🎬 Hippocampal ripples mark event boundaries
🧩 Cortical ripples predict later recall

Ripples may help transform real-life experiences into lasting memories!

rdcu.be/eui9l

#neurojobs

Benchmarking methods for mapping functional connectivity in the brain | doi.org/10.1038/s415...

What is the best measure of functional connectivity (FC)?

led by @zhenqi.bsky.social in @natmethods.nature.com ⤵️

#neurojobs

Loved the Kronotrop cafe! 👌

How strong is the rhythm of perception? A registered replication of Hickok et al. (2015) | Royal Society Open Science Our ability to predict upcoming events is a fundamental component of human cognition. One way in which we do so is by exploiting temporal regularities in sensory signals: the ticking of a clock, falli...

Once upon a time I couldn't replicate a published finding...and decided to do something about it.

Little did I know how long it would take to finish 😭...but here we are. I'm super proud of this paper and grateful to the other 68 (!) authors. ❤️

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Evidence in support of the "Brain from the inside out":

Response to movies is dominated by intrinsic brain dynamics. The dynamic itself is barely alternatered by the task of watching movies.

Human intracranial recordings from 5000 electrodes, now out in eLife.

elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Very nice interaction and reflection on what it means to say "I'm aware!"
hedgehogreview.com/web-features...

Decoding words during sentence production with ECoG reveals syntactic role encoding and structure-dependent temporal dynamics Communications Psychology - Using electrical recordings taken from the surface of the brain, researchers decode what words neurosurgical patients are saying and show that the brain plans words in a...

🧠 Newly out: Paper-with-a-way-too-long-name-for-social-media! How does the brain turn words into sentences? We tracked words in participants' brains while they produced sentences, and found some unexpectedly neat patterns. 🧵1/9
rdcu.be/epA1J in @commspsychol.nature.com

www.tedxpa.com/events/new-r...

Super proud of this! Thread to come soon…

Thank you very much! 😊

Here's a couple celebrating some recent accomplishments! @ezgisari.bsky.social
had a paper accepted, got 2 travel awards, has a platform presentation coming up and got her 100th citation for her 8 papers 🎉🥳😊 and I matched at Duke Epilepsy. We wish everyone achieve what they long for. 🙏😇

It's not too late to register for the FND Society "Functional Seizures and Epilepsy" course - Jun 13-14. In-person and online places available. www.fndsociety.org/fnd-educatio....

FNDS members - $170
Trainee members - $50
Trainee members (virtual) - $0!

NEW FND FILM !- 'Recognising Functional Seizures'🎥

neurosymptoms.org/en/media/fnd...

This 7-minute film was designed to help doctors and other health professionals, especially in emergency medical settings, learn about functional seizures and how to tell them apart from epileptic seizures. 1/

They are so common in our area (Birmingham, AL). They don't make much damage initially, but are annoying to be around. But then come back every year and dig more holes where they lay eggs. After they're gone, would recommend covering the entry points and maybe painting over as well.

Thank you, Dr. Cogan. Looking forward to working with you! 😊