Kun Dong

RIP efficient coding 😜

Neuroscience undermines the higher-order theorists’ preferred solution to the targetless HOT problem The Higher-Order Theory (HOT) of consciousness holds that mental states become conscious when they are represented by another mental state. Most HOT theorists maintain that it is the higher-order, ...

This paper argues against higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness. But its conclusion matches my understanding of HOT: conscious experience requires both a higher-order model and its linkage to posterior cortex.
doi.org/10.1080/0951...
#neuroscience

Excited to share our new paper in @pnas.org with @bnmorillon.bsky.social &
@valentinwyart.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
We study three core inference systems, and how their interaction shapes human learning and decision-making.

What is the brain for? Active inference is widely discussed as a unifying framework for understanding brain function, yet its empirical status remains debated. Our review identifies core predictions across the action-perception cycle and evaluates their empirical support: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Learning realistic lip motions for humanoid face robots We propose a self-supervised facial action transformer that enables multilingual lip synchronization in humanoid robots.

Learning realistic lip motions for humanoid face robots www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... "anthropomorphic robots often fail to achieve lip-audio synchronization, resulting in clumsy and lifeless lip behaviors" Here: soft silicone lips actuated by a 10–degree-of-freedom mechanism- not uncanny at all 😉

Hierarchical interactions between sensory cortices defy predictive coding Perceptual experience depends on recurrent interactions between lower and higher cortices. One theory, predictive coding, posits that feedback from higher to lower brain regions decreases neuronal activity predicted by higher-level representations. Despite the widespread adoption of predictive coding in neuroscience, the correspondence to neurophysiological findings in sensory cortices remains elusive. Here, we review how the canonical patterns of intra- and inter-cortical interactions that occur during perception and shifts of attention deviate from those predicted by predictive coding. We argue that these circuit interactions are better captured by alternative theories, which we summarize under the umbrella term BELIEF. We review how BELIEF theories account for the inter-areal interactions during attentive perception.

Online Now: Hierarchical interactions between sensory cortices defy predictive coding

Correlation detection as a stimulus computable account for audiovisual perception, causal inference, and saliency maps in mammals Optimal cue integration, Bayesian Causal Inference, spatial orienting, speech illusions and other key phenomena in audiovisual perception naturally emerge from the collective behavior of a population ...

Correlation detection as a stimulus computable account for AV perception, causal inference & saliency maps in mammals elifesciences.org/articles/106... Image- & sound-computable population model for AV perception -> Used simulation to model psychophysical, eye-tracking & pharmacological experiments

The spatiotemporal structure of neural activity in motor cortex during reaching Intracortical brain-computer interfaces (BCI) leverage knowledge about neural representations to translate movement-related neural activity into actions. BCI implants have targeted broad cortical regi...

🚨Pre-print alert! 🚨https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.17.683171v1

Our new study tackles the question: do all neurons in motor cortices (MC) encode movement & coordinate as we move? Answering this question will be key for effectively targeting motor representations in BCIs.

Sensory reformatting for a working visual memory A core function of visual working memory (WM) is to sustain mental representations of recent visual inputs, thereby bridging moments of experience. This is thought to occur in part by recruiting early...

Sensory reformatting for a working visual memory
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
#neuroscience

Arousal as a universal embedding for spatiotemporal brain dynamics - Nature Reframing of arousal as a latent dynamical system can reconstruct multidimensional measurements of large-scale spatiotemporal brain dynamics on the timescale of seconds in mice.

Super proud of this collaboration with rockstar Ryan Raut - born out of playing in the sandbox in our last year of grad school! Multi-scale brain activity can be predicted from a simple measure of arousal like pupil diameter. Out with linear causality, in with dynamic systems to explain neurobiology

Mirror manifolds: partially overlapping neural subspaces for speaking and listening Participants in conversations need to associate words their speakers but also retain those words general meanings. For example, someone talking about their hand is not referring to the other speakers ...

New manuscript from the lab!

"Mirror manifolds: partially overlapping neural subspaces for speaking and listening"

Led by superstar grad student Anilu Chavez (not on Bluesky)!

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

Big congrats!!

Interested in hippocampal dynamics and their interactions with cortical rhythms?

Our physically constrained model of cortico-hippocampal interactions - complete with fast geometrically informed numerical simulation (available at embedded github repo)

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

Prior expectations guide multisensory integration during face-to-face communication Author summary Face-to-face communication is complex: what we say is coupled with bodily signals, offset in time, which may or may not work in concert to convey meaning. Yet, the brain rapidly determi...

Prior expectations guide multisensory integration during face-to-face communication journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol... Is there a stronger prior tendency to integrate audiovisual signals that convey the same communicative intention (& is this based on an optimal Bayesian decision)?

1/N What are the organizational principles underlying crossmodal cortical connections?
We address this in this new preprint, led by @alexegeaweiss.bsky.social & ‪@bturner-bridger.bsky.social‬ in collab w/ ‪@petrznam.bsky.social‬ @crick.ac.uk
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour - Nature The International Brain Laboratory presents a brain-wide electrophysiological map obtained from pooling data from 12 laboratories that performed the same standardized perceptual decision-making task i...

The two key studies of the International Brain Laboratory @intlbrainlab.bsky.social are out today!

A brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Brain-wide representations of prior information in mouse decision-making
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

𝗠𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗹𝗹
This target paper by Anil Seth should lead to good discussion.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

GitHub - poldrack/ai-peer-review: A tool for AI-assisted meta-review of scientific papers A tool for AI-assisted meta-review of scientific papers - poldrack/ai-peer-review

If you haven't used Claude Code yet, you should - it's absolutely amazing! Yesterday I built an app that uses 4 LLM APIs (openai, anthropic, google, and together.ai) to perform an automated meta-review of a paper - using only the Claude interface, never touching code! github.com/poldrack/ai-...

Perceptual and attentional impairments of conscious access involve distinct neural mechanisms despite equal task performance When performance is matched, the attentional blink allows for greater integration of complex stimulus features than masking, reflecting spared recurrent processing during attentional versus perceptual...

In @elife.bsky.social: Perceptual and attentional impairments of conscious access involve distinct neural mechanisms despite equal task performance doi.org/10.7554/eLif... by Samuel Noorman with @timostein.bsky.social and Simon van Gaal. Well done Samuel!

A drawing of a wolf posted on a corkboard. They are wearing a collar with a leash and carrying the leash in their mouth. Text above them reads “Do It Yourself!!”

The cingulate cortex facilitates auditory perception under challenging listening conditions | PNAS We often exert greater cognitive resources (i.e., listening effort) to understand speech under challenging acoustic conditions. This mechanism can ...

Excited to share my latest work just out in @pnas.org! This NIH MOSAIC K99-funded project identifies a top-down cortical circuit—from cingulate to auditory cortex—that supports auditory perceptual performance in challenging listening conditions: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

On the Biology of a Large Language Model We investigate the internal mechanisms used by Claude 3.5 Haiku — Anthropic's lightweight production model — in a variety of contexts, using our circuit tracing methodology.

This is an utterly amazing paper.

#CNS2025 | Happening now
Talk 5 by Prof. Kalina Christoff is sharing insights based on the dynamic framework of thought and emphasizing on the subcortical-to-cortical interaction within the type A DMN about the neural correlates of the spontaneous thoughts.

#CNS2025 | Happening now
Talk 4 by Yuhua Yu @yuhuay.bsky.social
They use a think-aloud paradigm and a hidden-Markov model to investigate the temporal dynamics of spontaneous thoughts to address the challenges of integrating content and dynamics across time✨

#CNS2025 | Happening now
Talk 3 by Prof. Matthias Mittner
They investigate attentional switches from a combined fMRI and pupilometry study based on a theoratical model with NE activity and develop a probed hidden-Markov model to predict the mental state on-off.

#CNS2025 | Happening now
Symposium 9 Talk 2
Prof. Aaron Kucyi is sharing the preliminary results under the topic of “predicive neural modeling of resting-state spontaneous though” with neural data from 3 intensively-sampled individuals.

#CNS2025 | Happening now
Symposium 9 Talk 1 by Julia Kam from the University of Calgary is sharing insights from EEG signals about neural oscillatory signatures of ongoing thoughts during naturalistic tasks.

#CNS2025 Symposium Session 9 | Happening now
Hosted by Aaron Kucyi kicking-off immerging cool research area in “Decoding spontaneous thought from neural activity.”

5/5 #CNS2025
Etienne Abassi from @zatorrelab presented his latest work using intact/scrambled music pieces to explore the cognitive mechanisms underlying auditory scene analysis focusing on the influence of social context and musical structures in 🎵 conversations!