Borjan (Boki) Milinković

Symmetries at the origin of hierarchical emergence Many systems of interest exhibit nested emergent layers with their own rules and regularities, and our knowledge about them seems naturally organised around these levels. This paper proposes that this...

Preprint time:
“Symmetries at the origin of hierarchical emergence”
arxiv.org/abs/2512.00984

On how symmetries generate hierarchical macroscales and shape the structure of our beliefs, making high-dimensional inference tractable

Sleep-like slow waves in wakefulness index post-stroke behavioural alterations Increases in high-amplitude, low-frequency EEG oscillations during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep serve as markers of neuronal silencing, which disrupts functional connectivity and is associated ...

🚨 New preprint on cortical slowing, stroke, and attention

**Sleep-like slow waves in wakefulness index post-stroke behavioural alterations**

Link:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

@dreamteamicm.bsky.social @institutducerveau.bsky.social
🧠🧪💤

This place..

The process of writing feels like a never-ending process of not being able to deliver. A constant regurgitation of ideas that one is never satisfied with once vomited out.

It is not satisfaction that deems the work complete, but the inability to stomach the bile any longer.

Beeping the hive-mind: Has there been anything published as an exposition of, *if* and *how* GNWT aligns with functional computationalism? ..Or is it primarily based on unofficially assumed relations?

One of the key limitations I find are the 'metaphors we live by'. They are useful and then we need to build on them.

One such is the model of a very basic electric circuit, as a model for neuronal activity.

We'll get there.. I'm sure.

..in hydroelectrodynamics, all the way to more empirical work on endogenous electric fields, the evidence is there.

Not to mention that the brain itself is endowed with continuum properties, given it's nature, one of which are oscillations. It is a noble pursuit to see how much effect they have.

I'd agree. There is a lot of work showing not just correlation between oscillations and function, but the mechanistic drive of electric fields in biomimetic media and neural tissue. But this beyond a BlueSky post.

From Poynting vectors in electrodynamics, to ferroelectric effects..

Doom scrolling BlueSky recently, I love that @earlkmiller.bsky.social single-handedly stirred you all.

..On whichever side of the argument you sit on. ;-)

Keeping it Punk whilst retaining rigour. Solid move, if you ask me.

If we continue like this, a degree will soon be nothing more than a driving licence for AI.

This looks really nice!

Jaxley: differentiable simulation enables large-scale training of detailed biophysical models of neural dynamics - Nature Methods Jaxley is a versatile platform for biophysical modeling in neuroscience. It allows efficiently simulating large-scale biophysical models on CPUs, GPUs and TPUs. Model parameters can be optimized with ...

I am super happy to share that our project on training biophysical models with Jaxley is now published in Nature Methods: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Wow

FOODEEG: An open dataset of human electroencephalographic and behavioural responses to food images Investigating the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying food choices has the potential to advance our understanding of eating behaviour and inform health-targeted interventions and policy. Large, publi...

Our new preprint on the FOODEEG open dataset is out! EEG recordings and behavioural responses on food cognition tasks for 117 participants will be made publicly available 🧠 @danfeuerriegel.bsky.social @tgro.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Our School is recruiting! Come and join a great team
@MonashUni

careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo...

careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo...

careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo...

Curl Descent: Non-Gradient Learning Dynamics with Sign-Diverse Plasticity Gradient-based algorithms are a cornerstone of artificial neural network training, yet it remains unclear whether biological neural networks use similar gradient-based strategies during learning. Expe...

🚨New spotlight paper at Neurips 2025🚨

We show that in sign-diverse networks, inherent non-gradient “curl” terms arise, and can, depending on network architecture, destabilize gradient-descent solutions or paradoxically accelerate learning beyond pure gradient flow.

🧵⬇️

www.arxiv.org/abs/2510.02765

I hope taking part in the trial means I will never have to experience another relapse and that my MS symptoms will not progress. I know it is still experimental but it offers a scientific rationale which, as a biology teacher, makes sense to me.

A multiple sclerosis patient in the UK was the first to receive CAR T cell therapy, invented by UCL researchers, in a clinical trial testing whether this personalised treatment can slow or even halt the progression of the disease. @uclqsion.bsky.social
www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/oc...

I do love me some martial arts analogies.. 😅

A Minimal Quantitative Model of Perceptual Suppression and Breakthrough in Visual Rivalry When conflicting images are presented to either eye, binocular fusion is disrupted. Rather than experiencing a blend of both percepts, often only one eye's image is experienced, whilst the other is su...

The final paper of my PhD is now out as a preprint. This is a follow-up piece in series of two companion papers modelling awareness and suppression in a new variant of continuous flash suppression.

arxiv.org/abs/2510.17154

🧵 1/3

It is an enormous pleasure—and a dream, really—to share that the University of Bamberg has approved an initiative dedicated to mathematical approaches in #ConSci. The initiative is called Bamberg Mathematical Consciousness Science Initiative, or BAMΞ for short.

bamxi.org #BAMΞ @uni-bamberg.de

Is academic research becoming too competitive? Nature examines the data Applications for European research grants increased in 2025. Scientists say they’re feeling the competition.

Will academia remain a viable option for many of us?

I still hope so.

With love for this game, I hope science promises to still be a field we can participate it.

In this world filled with doom-noise, lets aspire for optimistic mindsets.

Me too. :-(
One of my favourite thinkers re-entering my life in ways I did not expect.

“A musician finding his ear become every day more delicate, and correcting himself by reflection and attention, proceeds with the same act of the mind, even when the subject fails him, and entertains a notion of a compleat tierce or octave..”

Hume, 1739, presaging predictive processing

Thrilled to share our new study: “Distilling the neurophenomenological signatures of pure awareness during Transcendental Meditation”, combining subjective reports with large-scale screening of neural features to investigate pure awareness. Thread below! 👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The eternally flagrant optimist in me would like to believe that this work will have far-reaching impact.

Synergistic Motifs in Gaussian Systems High-order interdependencies are central features of complex systems, yet a mechanistic explanation for their emergence remains elusive. Currently, it is unknown under what conditions high-order inter...

🚨 How do collective behaviours (high-order interdependencies) *emerge*❓

Can systems with low-order interactions do it?
What do these minimal synergistic systems look like?

In arxiv.org/abs/2505.246... we show when and how synergies emerge when no high-order mechanisms are involved.

Short 🧵: 1/N

Immersive NREM dreaming preserves subjective sleep depth against declining sleep pressure Perceived sleep depth is a key determinant of subjective sleep quality, traditionally thought to reflect unconsciousness and reduced cortical activation. Here, we combined high-density EEG with a seri...

🚨 New preprint 🚨
"Immersive NREM dreaming preserves subjective sleep depth against declining sleep pressure." We analyzed 1,024 awakenings collected across 196 nights with high-density EEG (256 ch.) to explore the relationship between dreaming and subjective sleep depth.

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Throwing this one into the virtual void in the hope there are a few hapless souls interested:

Would anyone like to participate in an #Information #Geometry reading/journal/study club? Preferably in person, if you're in Paris.

But, would consider doing an online one *for sure*.

But it does, however, look exactly like the long black coffee ;-)

Brighton feels as good as I remember it.