Defne Büyükyazgan

US applications for prestigious European research grants surge Rush for funds to relocate laboratories to Europe is latest sign of a US brain drain.

I've written two @nature.com stories this week looking at whether EU efforts to lure US scientists are working 🧪

They are: the number of US applicants wanting to take up ERC grants has doubled. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

As promised: a detailed figure-by-figure thread on our @pnas.org paper:

doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

We use signal correlations and noise correlations in chronic imaging data to show that representational drift is shaped by a balance between Hebbian and stochastic changes.

Let’s dive in 👇

🧠🧪 1/9

Building compositional tasks with shared neural subspaces Nature - The brain can flexibly perform multiple tasks by compositionally combining task-relevant neural representations.

Thrilled that my paper is out in the @nature.com. We explored how the brain builds complex tasks by compositionally combining simpler sub-task representations. The brain flexibly performs multiple tasks by dynamically reusing neural subspaces for sensory inputs and motor actions

rdcu.be/eRVUk

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...

Hey y’all! My institute started a new set of training programs for people interested in careers in the neurotech space.

Spread the word!

If you'd like to study Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, don't miss this info event on Wednesday! 👉 bit.ly/4aX4Yc8 #CompNeuro #BernsteinNetwork

very excited to share some of the final bits of work from my PhD! 🎉 we find that phasic DA in the accumbens simultaneously tracks persistent motivation towards reward cues in addition to new learning (but maybe not RPE?!) in sign-tracking rats. check out the preprint below!

She is in fact, wonderful :)

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