Defne Büyükyazgan

Different learning algorithms achieve shared optimal outcomes in humans, rats, and mice Animals must exploit environmental regularities to make adaptive decisions, yet the learning algorithms that enabels this flexibility remain unclear. A central question across neuroscience, cognitive science, and machine learning, is whether learning relies on generative or discriminative strategies. Generative learners build internal models the sensory world itself, capturing its statistical structure; discriminative learners map stimuli directly onto choices, ignoring input statistics. These strategies rely on fundamentally different internal representations and entail distinct computational trade-offs: generative learning supports flexible generalisation and transfer, whereas discriminative learning is efficient but task-specific. We compared humans, rats, and mice performing the same auditory categorisation task, where category boundaries and rewards were fixed but sensory statistics varied. All species adapted their behaviour near-optimally, consistent with a normative observer constrained by sensory and decision noise. Yet their underlying algorithms diverged: humans predominantly relied on generative representations, mice on discriminative boundary-tracking, and rats spanned both regimes. Crucially, end-point performance concealed these differences, only learning trajectories and trial-to-trial updates revealed the divergence. These results show that similar near-optimal behaviour can mask fundamentally different internal representations, establishing a comparative framework for uncovering the hidden strategies that support statistical learning. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Wellcome Trust, https://ror.org/029chgv08, 219880/Z/19/Z, 225438/Z/22/Z, 219627/Z/19/Z Gatsby Charitable Foundation, GAT3755 UK Research and Innovation, https://ror.org/001aqnf71, EP/Z000599/1

paper🚨
When we learn a category, do we learn the structure of the world, or just where to draw the line? In a cross-species study, we show that humans, rats & mice adapt optimally to changing sensory statistics, yet rely on fundamentally different learning algorithms.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Good morning #SfN25! Looking for some posters to see this afternoon? Check out two by our lab: GG15 and HH1 🧠🧪👩🏻‍🔬

Chand lab is at SfN! (And I’m looking for postdocs on cells types and dynamics; reach out if you want to chat!)

The best (and only) uni merch I have ever purchased in my life 🦴

A sad day for Neuroscience in the Netherlands.

I'm recruiting PhD students for my lab at Northwestern! I'm reviewing applications for the Department of Psychology for the Cognitive Affective Neuroscience and Clinical areas, due 12/1. 🧠

Come join the CATS Lab: nucatslab.com

Learn about our latest research: iamh.northwestern.edu/research/res...

Between October 13-17th we ran the second edition of Ibn Sina Neurotech School hosted and sponsored by NYUAD Center for Brain and Health and @ibroorg.bsky.social
We welcomed 18 students from across the world to learn hands-on about fMRI data collection and processing

Current trends in European Research funding... 😵‍💫 erc.europa.eu/news-events/...

What a wonderful study :)

The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org The Nobel Prize rewards science, humanism and peace efforts. This is one of the central concepts in the will of Alfred Nobel, and it also permeates the outreach activities that have been developed for...

Six of the nine Nobel Prize winners this year work in the U.S.
Three of the six were born outside the U.S., which is the pattern most years. No country has benefited more from welcoming immigrants from around the world.
www.nobelprize.org

🚨ATTN: Prospective Psych & Neuro doctoral students 🚨
Sign-up for the @BostonCollege Pre-Doctoral Mentorship Program (PDMP) for one-on-one mentorship to psychology & neuroscience doctoral programs. Sign-up ASAP, deadline 11/15. See the link in the flyer.

This rule would have meant I couldn't do my Ph.D. in America.

I did do it in America. Became a professor. 12 thriving U.S. labs are now headed by trainees from my research lab. Like me, they are all working hard to enrich American knowledge and society.

With this self-harming rule, none of that.

Congratulations to all ERC @erc.europa.eu #STG winners @tum.de and around Europe! 🎉👏🏻🧪 Can’t wait to hear about the exciting science you will all be doing!

found this old intergenerational notebook while I was packing at home. probably from covid times. eventually one of us is becoming a scientist 👩🏽‍🔬 and the other one is already a banker 👩🏽‍💻. #womeninSTEM #womeninfinance

[Aly Lab Logo: schematic of brain in shades of blue with two cut-out seahorses facing each other]. Postdoctoral Position in the Aly Lab at UC Berkeley. We are recruiting a postdoctoral scholar to work on NSF-funded research examining competition and cooperation in memory-guided attention. The position will be supervised by Dr. Mariam Aly (https://www.alylab.org/) in the Department of Psychology at UC Berkeley. Candidates should have a PhD in Psychology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, or a related field, and expertise in studies of behavior as well as neuroimaging and/or eye tracking. This is a two-year position with a flexible start date. More details here: https://tinyurl.com/alylabpostdoc

I can't quite believe it – I got a new NSF grant! 😲🤯

I'm incredibly grateful to the program officers & reviewers for their dedication and efforts to keep science going 🌟👏🏼

So, I'll be hiring! Looking for a postdoc to study competition in memory-guided attention. See flyer for details! 🎉

Support a student to attend #ISNeurotech25
We are looking to support ten more students to attend the Ibn Sina Neurotech school to learn all about fMRI and brain science
www.zeffy.com/en-CA/donati...

that time of the year when this is how your email finds me 🏡🌊

presented my first data blitz on our MDMA-assisted therapy work at the first new england addiction neuroscience (NEAN) research conference, hosted at brown. thanks to the organizers for the opportunity! @karlakaun.bsky.social

The rumors are true! #CCN2026 will be held at NYU. @toddgureckis.bsky.social and I will be executive-chairing. Get in touch if you want to be involved!

For Some Patients, the ‘Inner Voice’ May Soon Be Audible

Incredible work on brain-computer interface technology that can decode "imagined" inner speech. The research team, led by Stanford University, includes Carney-affiliated Professor of Engineering Leigh Hochberg and Brown alumni David Brandman PhD’18, MD, and Sergey Stavisky ’08 of UC Davis.

Did you know that your neighbors influence your political party?

New in The Journal of Politics: Panel data on 41M voters show that people are more likely to switch political parties to match their neighbors.

Congratulations to the newly minted Dr. Hannah Doyle!!! Her defense was awesome and yes, that is a championship belt that the lab made for her (she’s also a kick a** boxer) 💪🥊🧠👩🏻‍🔬🧪🎉🎊🥳 #neuroscience #WomenInSTEM

Ultra-processed foods make up over half of Americans’ calories, CDC says Roughly 55 percent of the average daily caloric intake comes from ultra-processed foods, which HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has vowed to crack down on.

Ultra-processed foods account for roughly 55 percent of the calories Americans consume daily, according to new federal data.

Dr. Emily Jacobs — Stories of WiN studies how hormonal fluctuations influence the brain

Our latest profile just dropped! Dr. Emily Jacobs (‪@emilyjacobs.bsky.social‬) studies how hormonal fluctuations influence the brain. Follow the link below to listen to the full interview!

www.storiesofwin.org/profiles/202...

#WomenInNeuroscience #StoriesOfWiN

What do representations tell us about a system? Image of a mouse with a scope showing a vector of activity patterns, and a neural network with a vector of unit activity patterns Common analyses of neural representations: Encoding models (relating activity to task features) drawing of an arrow from a trace saying [on_____on____] to a neuron and spike train. Comparing models via neural predictivity: comparing two neural networks by their R^2 to mouse brain activity. RSA: assessing brain-brain or model-brain correspondence using representational dissimilarity matrices

In neuroscience, we often try to understand systems by analyzing their representations — using tools like regression or RSA. But are these analyses biased towards discovering a subset of what a system represents? If you're interested in this question, check out our new commentary! Thread:

ikinize de cok tebrikler 💫

A multimodal approach for visualization and identification of electrophysiological cell types in vivo Neurons of different types perform diverse computations and coordinate their activity during sensation, perception, and action. While electrophysiological recordings can measure the activity of many n...

Are you allowed another tweeprint for a revised preprint? Anyways, it's been a year since we first put out PhysMAP (I also do [many] monkey experiments!) and thanks to some excellent reviews + additional co-authors, we're really excited about where we've landed! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Very happy to see this work with Euan Prentis posted! If you’re going to CCN next week, go check out Euan’s poster on this work!

congrats to you both!

NYU Application Support Group Matching Form Dear Prospective Neuroscience & Psychology PhD Students, We are a group of current NYU Neuroscience & Psychology PhD students who would like to help you with your PhD applications. We want to support...

Thinking of applying to US-based Ph.D. programs in neuroscience, psychology, or cognitive science? We’ve got your back! NYU’s Application Support Group is a student-led, free mentorship program offering 1-on-1 support and guidance. Apply now! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...