Kayson Fakhar

Why did consciousness evolve at all? A superb special issue of @royalsocietypublishing.org brings together experts across disciplines to explore the functions of consciousness and why it emerged in some species but not others. @tecumsehfitch.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...

Could the logic of life be shaped by the architecture of biological circuitry? In this paper, @manlius.bsky.social shows how genetic, metabolic, and social networks can govern slow evolutionary dynamics in a unified nonequilibrium framework. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Non-invasive brain surface stimulation targeting personalized SCAN alleviated symptoms in patients with Parkinson’s disease. See the videos below.(www.nature.com/articles/s41...)

#ProtistsOnSky
no 'swimming' by 𝘝𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘺𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢, definitively no 'staying still'. just a relaxed walk towards the lunch...

This is happening today.

The evolutionary potential of symbiosis Abstract. Symbiosis is considered a source of evolutionary innovation. Example innovations that have evolved in symbioses include new organs, morphological

New perspective on the evolutionary potential of symbiotic interactions!

Is there something special about symbiosis that leads to new traits and adaptations? If so, how would we know and how would this work?

academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

Why don’t neural networks learn all at once, but instead progress from simple to complex solutions? And what does “simple” even mean across different neural network architectures?

Sharing our new paper @iclr_conf led by Yedi Zhang with Peter Latham

arxiv.org/abs/2512.20607

Iranians are experiencing a collective trauma. Thousands have been killed/injured in recent events, the economy is crippled & the threat of a wider conflict is real. This is especially difficult for those living in Iran, as many have lost (or fear losing) loved ones. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Infants organise their visual world into categories at two-months-old! So happy to see these results published - congratulations Cliona and the rest of the FOUNDCOG team.

This Thursday (Feb 5th) we're hosting Dr. Salvador Durá-Bernal with a talk on “Large-scale biophysical models of neuronal circuits to study brain function and disease”.
Here's the registration link and the abstract:
cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

The Good Research Code Handbook This handbook is for grad students, postdocs and PIs who do a lot of programming as part of their research. It will teach you, in a practical manner, how to organize your code so that it is easy to...

Discovered @patrickmineault.bsky.social's excellent Good Research Code Handbook today, which was always awesome, but is even more necessary as more scientists consider integrating coding agents into their workflows.

goodresearch.dev

YouTube video by MIT Consciousness Club George Mashour - Consciousness and the Dying Brain

The recording of George Mashour's talk "Consciousness and the dying brain" is now available: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz7o....

Are episodic and semantic memory really that different? Using closely matched tasks, we found no substantial neural differences between recalling personal experiences and general knowledge: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02390-4

This is what an engineer would typically do: to build a robot, one would design perception modules, typically one per sensory modality, planning modules, and motor control modules (but see Brooks (1986) for an alternative way of building robots). The reasons for this modularity are cognitive and social. Cognitively, this allows one to focus on one simple problem at a time, following Descartes’ rule of analysis (Descartes, 1637): to divide the problem into smaller, more intelligible, pieces ("Diviser chacune des difficultés que j'examinerais, en autant de parcelles qu'il se pourrait et qu'il serait requis pour les mieux résoudre"). Socially, it also allows work to be divided between different people, or even different companies: one in charge of each module. These modules can then be reused in different contexts, different machines that combine modules in new ways. For this to work, the input-output properties of modules are well-specified, for example by stating that a module’s output represents sound direction. What the output represents should not depend on the context in which the module is embedded. Thus, there are excellent reasons for engineers to use modular design. But brains are not made by people, let alone by human societies. However appealing the functional argument for computational modularity might be, it is hard to reconcile with the known physiology and anatomy of nervous systems.

Brain modularity is a concept inspired by how we make machines. But brains are not made by people.

press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

New paper out at PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Revisiting the high-dimensional geometry of population responses in the visual cortex with @jpillowtime.bsky.social. The review took forever because a reviewer was doubtful our new estimator can infer eigenvalues beyond the rank of the data! (1/6)

Postdoc position in Paris: come help develop new generation human brain computer interfaces ⚡🧠💻

Interested? Contact me if you have experience with machine learning (e.g. simulation-based inference, RL, generative/diffusion models) or dynamical systems.

See below for + details and retweet 🙏

We could all use some extra stress #resilience rn. But how does it work in the brain? On the surface, resilience looks like ignoring stress. Does the brain fail to respond? Or are active adaptations required? Or are resilience and susceptibility divergent paths? doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2025.116867

Happy to share our preprint with @neworderofjamie.bsky.social , @danakarca.bsky.social and @drtnowotny.bsky.social !

We’ve been working on a neuron position learning algorithm by coupling space and time! See manuscript below 👇

Nine subcortical/cerebellar atlases included in the subcortex_visualization Python package (and subcortexVisualizationR package in R). The atlases are depicted in two-dimensional vector graphic format.

The extended version of my thesis procrastination project/subcortex visualization package is out now in both Python and R, now that I’ve graduated 🤠 This figure shows the 9 atlases included (and counting)!

Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Website: anniegbryant.github.io/subcortex_vi...

A bird's-eye view of a former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp showing a wide dirt pathway flanked by parallel rows of barbed-wire fences. Groups of visitors walk along the path, surrounded by the remnants of brick structures and barracks, now reduced to foundations. Green grass contrasts with the somber history of the site, as the path leads toward a guard tower in the distance.

Auschwitz was at the end of a process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers.

This hatred gradually developed: from ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder.

Auschwitz took time.

Decoding behavior with minimal and interpretable agent models www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Some days I wake up feeling like a minimal agent model

"The accounts from the massacre in Mashhad, Iran’s second-most populous city, are a small window into one of the most lethal government actions the Iranian regime has taken in recent history."

The interplay between poverty and the human brain connectome across the lifespan: A systematic review Living in poverty affects cognitive and emotional functioning. Accumulating research is exploring whether the adverse effects of poverty can be explai…

The interplay between poverty and the human brain connectome across the lifespan: A systematic review - ScienceDirect www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Anatomical White Matter Tracts Span the Cortical Hierarchy to Support Cognitive Diversity | bioRxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨 New paper from @comunelab.bsky.social ! 🧪🧠

If you do connectome analysis from correlations, you’re probably averaging at some point (and you probably don't give it much thought).

But when is it OK?

👉 www.nature.com/articles/s42...

🧵 1/

ADHD treatments move beyond stimulants Researchers are developing drugs to broaden the options on available therapies.

ADHD treatments move beyond stimulants www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Reminder that this is happening today.

Data-Driven Analysis Reveals Three Archetypes Of Armed Conflicts New CSH study identifies systematic patterns in armed conflicts across Africa – and the limits of forecasting conflict intensity, duration, or fatalities.

New study examines 20+ years of armed conflict data across Africa. Researchers @kushwaha.bsky.social and @spintheory.bsky.social identify three conflict archetypes, but also show that classification does not necessarily help to predict the severity of conflicts.

Learn more: shorturl.at/81pkf

What kinds of cognitions are possible? Are there discrete classes of cognition? Here's our new paper with @brigan.bsky.social @jordiplam.bsky.social @mitibennett.bsky.social @mkhochb.bsky.social and @drmichaellevin.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2601.12837 We explore basal, neural and human-AI spaces.