Bharath Talluri

Without monkeys, neuroscience has no future Research in primate brains has been essential for the development of BCIs, ANNs. New funding and policy changes put future such advances at risk.

Research in primate brains has been essential for the development of brain-computer interfaces and artificial neural networks. New funding and policy changes put future such advances at risk, write Cory Miller, @movshon.bsky.social and Doris Tsao.

#neuroskyence

bit.ly/47MXYLH

7 basic science discoveries that changed the world Ozempic, MRI machines and flat screen televisions all emerged out of fundamental research decades earlier — the very types of study being slashed by the US government.

A chemical extracted from carrot roots helped pave the way for flat-screen TVs, and six other discoveries that unintentionally changed the world.
Perfect talking points for when you need to defend basic science, whether it’s to your grumpy uncle or your MP.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Confirmation bias through selective readout of information encoded in human parietal cortex Nature Communications - People often discard incoming information when it contradicts their pre-existing beliefs about the world. Here, the authors show that this discarded information is precisely...

1/ New paper by Hame Park, (@AraziAyelet), Bharath Talluri, Marco Celotto, Stefano Panzeri, Alan Stocker & Tobias Donner published in Nature Communications – “Confirmation Bias through Selective Readout of Information Encoded in Human Parietal Cortex”: rdcu.be/etlR7. Here is a summary:

Performance feedback counterintuitively _increases_ overconfidence in young children. Great Collab @dsotob.bsky.social

14/ Needless to say, I am very happy that this is finally out there, and am super excited to share it with the world.

13/ This project saw me write my PhD thesis, defend it, become a parent, move to a different country to start a postdoc, take on a new scientific adventure doing NHP electrophysiology, and many more all while trying to stay sane & alive during a pandemic.

12/ Because information use is more susceptible to deliberative control, our results imply that confirmation bias may be malleable, contingent on appropriate feedback and incentives.

11/ We conclude that confirmation bias originates from the way in which decision-makers utilize information encoded in the brain, which sheds new light on an important cognitive phenomenon that has occupied scholars for centuries.

10/ By contrast, an information-theoretic measure of the use (“readout”) of encoded evidence for the final estimate (“intersection information”) in parietal and visual cortex was bigger for consistent than for inconsistent samples, in line with the selective use scenario.

9/ We also used MEG to measure cortical population dynamics in participants’ brains during the task. The evidence samples were precisely encoded in population activity in visual and parietal cortex, irrespective of their consistency with the previous choice.

8/ Interestingly, this consistency effect on behavioral evidence weighting was bigger when participants had to report their own categorical judgment of the evidence halfway through the trial, compared to when they instead received an external categorical cue.

7/ Participants’ final estimation reports were more strongly affected by evidence samples in the second half of the trial that were consistent (compared to inconsistent) with the previous left/right choice: a behavioral signature of confirmation bias.

6/ After viewing half of the samples, participants judged whether the mean of the source distribution was to the left or right from the vertical meridian. After viewing the rest of the samples, they reported a continuous estimation of the source with a joystick.

5/ To arbitrate between these scenarios, we asked participants to evaluate sequences of 12 noisy visual evidence samples: small discs with varying angles to the vertical meridian. Each sample was drawn from a hidden source: a probability distribution with constant mean per trial.

4/ We reasoned that such selective weighting of evidence could be brought about by two distinct neural mechanisms: (i) selective encoding of incoming evidence in the brain, or (ii) biased utilization of encoded evidence for reasoning and action.

3/ In earlier work (www.cell.com/current-biol..., we showed that such biases are also present in simple perceptual decisions.

2/ Human decision-makers often interpret information selectively, depending on whether that evidence aligns with the decision-maker’s previous beliefs and judgments: Consistent evidence is weighted more, and inconsistent evidence is weighted less. This is confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias through selective readout of information encoded in human parietal cortex - Nature Communications People often discard incoming information when it contradicts their pre-existing beliefs about the world. Here, the authors show that this discarded information is precisely encoded in the brain, but ...

New paper in @natcomms.nature.com: “Confirmation bias through selective readout of information encoded in human parietal cortex” (rdcu.be/etlR7) from my work in Donner lab. Jointly lead by Hame Park, Ayelet Arazi, & me, together with Marco Celotto, Stefano Panzeri, Alan Stocker and Tobias Donner. 🧵👇🏽

Inferring internal states across mice and monkeys using facial features - Nature Communications Here, the authors created a virtual reality task for monkeys and mice to explore if internal states like attention are similar across species. Their facial expressions during the task were similar, su...

Now out in @natcomms.nature.com‬: Mice and monkeys spontaneously shift through comparable cognitive states - and it's written all over their faces! (1/7)
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Computational characterization of metacognitive ability in subjective decision-making Metacognition is the process of reflecting on and controlling one's own thoughts and behaviors. Metacognitive ability is often measured through modeling the relationship between confidence reports and...

Preprint alert 🚨! Excited to share our new work on metacognition in value-based decision-making. www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/.... We ask whether it is possible to derive a computational measure of metacognitive ability for economic preference choices.

A very nice article about our research on the octopus visual system, by @callimcflurry.bsky.social @thetransmitter.bsky.social

Excited to be giving a talk at #VSS2025 on how activity in primate early visual cortex is modulated by internal state. We used ephys, latent variable models, pulse and respiration tracking and a whole bunch of controls to address this. Drop by in Talk room 1 this Sunday at 5.15 PM to know more.

Global coordination of brain activity by the breathing cycle - Nature Reviews Neuroscience Synchrony between neuronal activity and the respiratory cycle has been observed in numerous brain regions and across many species. Tort et al. discuss the mechanisms by which brain activity is modulat...

Great and comprehensive review by Adriano Tort and colleagues on respiratory involvement in both rodent and human brain activity. Can't help but be intrigued by the complexities of time scales, mechanisms, and behavioural relevance. Long and exciting road ahead. 🧠🟦

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Firing rates in visual cortex show representational drift, while temporal spike sequences remain stable Neural firing-rate responses to sensory stimuli show progressive changes both within and across sessions, raising the question of how the brain mainta…

Firing rates in visual cortex show representational drift, while temporal spike sequences remain stable

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Great work by Boris Sotomayor and with @battaglialab.bsky.social

Response sub-additivity and variability quenching in visual cortex Nature Reviews Neuroscience - Sub-additive responses to simultaneously presented stimuli and quenching of variability in responses to repeated presentations of a stimulus are characteristics of...

Why do sublinear response summation and quenching of shared variability tend to co-occur in cortex? We review phenomenological, normative, and circuit explanations. With Robbe Goris, Ruben Coen-Cagli, Nick Priebe, & Mate Lengyel. rdcu.be/dy1q5
🧪 #neuroskyence

Monkey studies throw wrench into decade-old idea about movement’s effect on visual cortex Movements that boost activity in the visual cortex of mice have the opposite or no effect in marmosets and macaques, prompting questions about whether mice are a suitable model for the primate visual…

Monkey studies throw wrench into decade-old idea about movement’s effect on visual cortex

By Angie Voyles Askham

www.thetransmitter.org/animal-model...

Academics - where are academic jobs posted for non-UK non-North American countries? If you were looking for jobs in, say, the Nordic countries, or Australia, where do you look? Asking for all the PhDs who are on the market this year. (Pls no April fools jokes, their nerves are frayed as it is)

Congratulations Julie. Looking forward to reading it!!

Bayesian inference by visuomotor neurons in the prefrontal cortex | PNAS Perceptual judgments of the environment emerge from the concerted activity of neural populations in decision-making areas downstream of the sensory...

Out today in PNAS! We asked how Bayesian inference is implemented in macaque prefrontal cortex www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Disentangling sources of variability in decision-making - Nature Reviews Neuroscience Identifying the psychological and neurobiological processes underpinning intra-individual variations in choice behaviour presents a formidable challenge. In this Review, Duffy et al. discuss how algor...

In life, 3 things are certain: death, taxes, and decision-making variability🧠. Our review tinyurl.com/4dcwafc4 explores how computational models 💻 explain variability, their limits, and recent advances. A thread🧵👇

@redmondoconnell.bsky.social @neuromurphy.bsky.social Mark Bellgrove (not on Bluesky)