Sander van Bree

🎉New Paper Alert!🎉

Really excited that this collaboration is finally out! It shows that combining oscillatory dynamics with hierarchical predictive frameworks generates speech perception that is robust to temporal distortions: similarly to human behavior and more so than current ASR models.

Great PhD opportunity!! ⬇️

ATTN🚨: I will be looking for PhD students through NYU's Center for Data Science PhD program this year. Applicants should have an interest in either NeuroAI (specifically biological attention or AI interpretability) or ML for Remote Sensing. Visit my lab website for more info: lindsay-lab.github.io

Open Questions about Time and Self-reference in Living Systems Living systems exhibit a range of fundamental characteristics: they are active, self-referential, self-modifying systems. This paper explores how these characteristics create challenges for convention...

New preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2508.11423

"Open Questions about Time and Self-reference in Living Systems"

by Samson Abramsky, Wolfgang Banzhaf, Leo S. D. Caves, Michael Levin, Penousal Machado, Charles Ofria, Susan Stepney, Roger White

🧪

Really looking forward to #CCN2025!

On Tuesday, I'm presenting new work with @kathadobs.bsky.social on segregated vs. integrated face & body processing in visual cortex 😊🧍🧠

Using DNNs & fMRI, we test competing hypotheses, finding both distinct & shared selectivity.

Come by Poster A64 for more.

Despite recent criticism from Quiroga to our claim that Concept Neurons emerge from Conjunctive Coding Neurons we claim: “And yet, the hippocampus codes conjunctively!”.
We hope it sparks a smile (and maybe a few debates).

Read here: tinyurl.com/3ycv3vj2

How is high-level visual cortex organized?

In a new preprint with @martinhebart.bsky.social & @kathadobs.bsky.social, we show that category-selective areas encode a rich, multidimensional feature space 🌈

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#neuroskyence

🧵 1/n

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...

How strong is the Rhythm of Perception? Molly Henry, Jonathan Peelle, and team found out in a large-scale registered replication of Hickok, et al. 2015. @jpeelle.bsky.social

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Cover of the textbook used in the workshop

✨We are organising (again) an online workshop on Theoretical Modeling for PhD candidates and Master students in cognitive science and psychology. Check out the website and the schedule: Registration is open! (closes July 1, spaces are limited) 🧵1/n computationalcognitivescience.github.io/workshop/

🧠✨How do we rebuild our memories? In our new study, we show that hippocampal ripples kickstart a coordinated expansion of cortical activity that helps reconstruct past experiences.

We recorded iEEG from patients during memory retrieval... and found something really cool 👇(thread)

YouTube video by Michael Levin's Academic Content Conversation with Lauren Ross #1

Enjoyed this discussion with @drmichaellevin.bsky.social

We discussed scientific explanation, its types, causation, reduction/emergence, & other topics.

Great to see the strength of bringing both science and philosophy to the table for hard topics.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoY-...

Excited to share our latest story! We found disentangled memory representations in the hippocampus that generalized across time and environments, despite the seemingly random drift and remapping of single cells. This code enabled the transfer of prior knowledge to solve new tasks

On the origin of memory neurons in the human hippocampus The hippocampus is essential for episodic memory, yet its coding mechanism remains debated. In humans, two main theories have been proposed: one suggests that concept neurons represent specific elemen...

New manuscript published! ✍️👀

Concept neurons evolve from index neurons through overlapping memories.

Check it out here: www.cell.com/trends/cogni... 1/15

We are hiring! Come work in sunny Marseille!
NeuroSchool PhD contracts in neuroscience are available at Aix Marseille University, France:

I submitted one project (#11) for the call for international PhDs:
"Investigating Music Listening in Human and Non-Human Primates."

Unpacking the complexities of consciousness: Theories and reflections As the field of consciousness science matures, the research agenda has expanded from an initial focus on the neural correlates of consciousness, to de…

2.5 years after ‘the great debate’ at ASSC Amsterdam, we revisit it: Lamme, @standehaene.bsky.social , @smfleming.bsky.social , Boly and @anilseth.bsky.social present their theories, and Melloni and myself try to extract some insights and criticisms. >>>
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New episode (1054), with Dr. Kathryn Nave (@kathrynnave.bsky.social). We talk about her great book, A Drive to Survive: The Free Energy Principle and the Meaning of Life. #Biology #Science

YouTube: youtu.be/DKUAaqb9WnA
Podcast: bit.ly/4jElnE1

JOB ALERT: Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Postdoc position in Osaka, Japan! Plus PhD positions for April 2026. PLEASE REPOST! #postdocjobs #neuroskyence #neuroscience #psychscisky #compneurosky

We had to re-start the process after our preferred candidate withdrew. Info 👇.

🚨 Also, I’ll soon be looking for a job! Feel free to dm me if you know someone who knows someone who works on something cool. I’m excited to connect and learn about post-doc opportunities (in Europe and beyond)
(6/6)

I think the representation part is necessary for it to be cognitive. I think plants and bacteria achieve complex behavior through non-cognitive mechanisms that rely on input from the environment without operations over models of referents in that world.

Where "non-trivial" means the operations have some minimum description length, "causal" means that interventions on the operations alter downstream events like behavior, thought, or activity, and "internal representation" means a mapping within the system to some referent in our outside the system.

All processes in any biological or non-biological system in which inputs are transformed into outputs by a non-trivial sequence of causal operations over internal representations.

Philosophy & Theory of Neuroscience Conference 🧠 next week @ Chapman & available via zoom.Talks by @drmichaellevin.bsky.social @meganakpeters.bsky.social Newsome, Yassa, Roskies, Carolyn Parkinson, Frederick Eberhardt & many others!

www.chapman.edu/scst/confere...

#philsky #philsci #neuroskyence

YouTube video by Neuroscience & Philosophy Salon Brain Oscillations in Field Potentials: Epiphenomenon or Causally Efficacious?

We offer our gratitude to the TICS editor, the reviewers for their constructive comments, and folks listed in the Acknowledgments section.

Public discussion hosted by @pessoabrain.bsky.social: www.youtube.com/watch?v=myx9...

Read here: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

On the whole, we view our contribution to be one of clarification. If two scientists have starkly different conceptions in mind when they discuss oscillations in their writing or conversation, this will hamper empirical progress.

Finally, we outline a view in which oscillations in processes across levels of organization orchestrate neuronal computation via three processing syntaxes. We explain and consider empirical results in favor of each mode.

Next, we turn to oscillations specifically. There can be oscillations in processes and measurements, and one may happen without the other. We spell out criteria for inferring oscillations-in-process, and we argue oscillatory e-fields have special causal roles.

As we evaluate each arrow in the figure, we pay special attention to the causal effects of e-fields, which are the processes that field potentials are a measurement of. We review evidence for the coupling of such e-fields back to neural processes.

To get our analysis going, we introduce two distinctions. First, we delineate measurements and processes. Second, we separate causal and inferential relevance. We take these axes and analyse the relations between field potentials, electric fields, neurobiological processes, etc.

The goal of this effort has been to argue against the notion that oscillations and field potentials are epiphenomenal. What emerged is a conceptual, theoretical, and empirical analysis on what various electrophysiology entities mean and do for us. [1/n]

Processes and measurements: a framework for understanding neural oscillations in field potentials Various neuroscientific theories maintain that brain oscillations are important for neuronal computation, but opposing views claim that these macroscale dynamics are ‘exhaust fumes’ of more relevant processes. Here, we approach the question of whether oscillations are functional or epiphenomenal by distinguishing between measurements and processes, and by reviewing whether causal or inferentially useful links exist between field potentials, electric fields, and neurobiological events. We introduce a vocabulary for the role of brain signals and their underlying processes, demarcating oscillations as a distinct entity where both processes and measurements can exhibit periodicity. Leveraging this distinction, we suggest that electric fields, oscillating or not, are causally and computationally relevant, and that field potential signals can carry information even without causality.

Our review on the theoretical status of oscillations and field potentials is out! What are their effects, and what can electrophysiology signals reveal about how the brain works?

w/ @dlevenstein.bsky.social @prokraustinator.bsky.social Bradley Voytek @rdgao.bsky.social

www.cell.com/trends/cogni...