Roozbeh Kiani

Can electrical microstimulation be used to steer cortical population activity on- and off-manifold? Our new preprint says yes — using data-driven control in macaque PFC. Joint work with @gbarzon.bsky.social, Anandita De, Isaac Moran, Conner Carnahan, and Luca Mazzucato.

Can't make it to #NJ12? Wherever you are, donate to my campaign!!. Wherever you are in the country, if you want to fight gerrymandering, defend science, and rebuild democracy, I'm on your side!

Donate:
secure.actblue.com/donate/sam4nj

I'd love to hear what your students think too.

Thanks, Armin. Once we allow that confidence is part of the action-related code in these action-initiation circuits, persistence during movement is exactly what we’d expect—similar to cortex. The progressive transformation and stabilization across the pallidothalamic pathway surprised me even more.

In the first systematic, multi-node recordings of spiking activity across the human basal ganglia–thalamic circuit, @dennislondon.bsky.social explains how this pathway integrates cognitive variables with ongoing action. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

We are very excited to announce that our new preprint with Saleh Esteki, @stefanofusi.bsky.social, and @roozbehkiani.bsky.social is now available on biorxiv! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6.... We investigated how reward context is learned, represented, and updated to bias decisions. Thread 🧵👇! 1/13

At #NeurIPS2025!

🎉 Excited to present Conditionally Linear Dynamical Systems (CLDS). We leverage the dependence of neural dynamics on task covariates to yield an interpretable, flexible model of dynamics.

Come meet and check it out!
📍: Poster #2209, Hall C,D,E on Thu Dec 4, 11 am–2 pm, PST.

🧵/6

So far this year at #NIH, I had to

- cancel a visiting speaker I was hosting
- cancel a distinguished lecture I was giving at a midwest university
- cancel another seminar visit to talk about our work
- cancel my trip to the Society for Neuroscience meeting
- now cancel my trip to NeurIPS
1/

Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs The selective revision of beliefs in light of new evidence has been considered one of the hallmarks of human-level rationality. However, tests of this ability in other species are lacking. We examined...

Are humans really the only rational animals? Our NEW PAPER 🎉 out in @science.org suggests otherwise! In a large collaboration led with my joint first author @hanna-schleihauf.bsky.social, we show that “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs” 🧵

Looking for a PhD program where you can study vision from different perspectives (computer vision, visual neuroscience, visual perception, image processing)? Consider applying to NYU!

visionscience.com/pipermail/vi...

Consider submitting your recent work on stimulus synthesis and selection to our special issue at JOV!

My message to Trump’s NIH Director? No one in America wants us to do LESS cancer research.

No one is asking Trump to make it harder to cure Alzheimer's disease.

Yet Trump is cutting all of this NOW and demanding an $18 BILLION cut to NIH next year. Not on my watch.

Me holding the first copies of Elusive Cures

Elusive Cures is my first book. I was surprised by how much was required to make it happen (beyond writing it). If you're curious, here's the who and how behind it ... 🧵

(My amazing publisher: @princetonupress.bsky.social)

Medical Research Funding — Unbreaking How the administration is breaking the government, and what that means for all of us.

I urge everyone to read Unbreaking’s new page on everything the govt is doing to destroy & diminish medical research funding.

It’s the best thing I’ve read on this topic: @lizneeley.bsky.social & co have such done an incredible job.

unbreaking.org/issues/medic...

Compositional pretraining improves computational efficiency and matches animal behaviour on complex tasks - Nature Machine Intelligence Hocker et al. demonstrate a method for training recurrent neural networks, which they call ‘kindergarten curriculum learning’, involving pretraining on simple cognitive tasks to improve learning effic...

David Hocker’s paper about compositional pretraining for RNNs that efficiently produces animal-like behaviors! Modeling cognitive tasks in RNNs requires thinking about latent abilities that animals bring to an experiment. Funded by NIH/CRCNS. www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Congrats Mark. Very well deserved.

Congratulations to Adrienne Fairhall, Prof. of Neurobiology and Biophysics, Adjunct Prof. of Applied Mathematics, and Adjunct Prof. of Physics, who has just been elected to the National Academy of Sciences! 🍾 🎉

Elusive Cures A neuroscientist’s bold proposal for tackling one of the greatest challenges of our time—brain and mental illnesses

30 days to the launch of Elusive Cures! I learned so much writing it, and I want to share it.

For the next 30 days, I'll post brain & mind research breakthroughs on odd days, and highlight unmet needs on even ones. #ElusiveCures30

First breakthrough: /1

press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

"Where Law Ends Tyranny Begins"

Engraving on the exterior of the United States Department of Justice headquarters.

All NIH study sections canceled indefinitely. This will halt science and devastate research budgets in universities.

Donate to Hot meals 4 Starved Palestinian Kids in north Gaza, organized by Hani Almadhoun Do you know what it’s like to watch your family starve? I do. My… Hani Almadhoun needs your support for Hot meals 4 Starved Palestinian Kids in north Gaza

Again, recommending this soup kitchen in Gaza that is doing *so much*. Donations are even tax deductible in USA. Please consider helping
gofund.me/608947b8

A post from user @liz_churchill7, states: "You can't make this up...inside these 'vaccines' are RNA modifying nanotechnology...that connects YOUR BODY to 5G (Pentagram)...which receives signals from CERN 666...and said 'Super Computer' that powers CERN is called 'The Beast'...CERN is located on the former Temple of Apollo."

Narrator: She made this up.

Werner Herzog muses on mysteries of the brain in Theater of Thought Auteur director’s latest documentary runs the gamut from BCIs and how we construct reality to whether fish can dream.

Werner Herzog muses on mysteries of the brain in "Theater of Thought." Auteur director's latest documentary runs the gamut from BCIs and how we construct reality to whether fish can dream. arstechnica.com/culture/2024...

A language model of problem solving in humans and macaque monkeys Yang et al. develop the Language of Problem Solving (LoPS) framework to study problem-solving structure in humans and monkeys playing Pac-Man. Humans show more complex, hierarchical grammar than monkeys. Grammar complexity correlates with performance and evolves during learning, providing insights into the structure and evolution of problem solving.

Amazing new work from @tianmingyang.bsky.social

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Here's one for team Insula - effects of stimulation in humans (wow!).

UCL – University College London UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

New position at UCL!! Lecturer in Neuroscience in the Department of Imaging Neuroscience, home to the internationally renowned Functional Imaging Laboratory (FIL). Details are here: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/.... 70% research, 30% teaching on a new BSc Neuroscience course.

Want to be part of the NeuroAI community CSHL ?

Applications are open for outstanding graduate students in Artificial Intelligence to spend the summer at CSHL as NeuroAI Interns.

Deadline: Dec 10th, 2024. Please spread the word!

www.schooljobs.com/careers/cshl...

@cshlaboratory.bsky.social

Ms DeLauro

A new hero! US Rep. Rosa DeLauro, to the NIH director in today's hearing.

"Your record .. is unparalleled in human history ... If we stop investigating infectious diseases, people will DIE! That needs to be said LOUDLY! and CLEARLY! in this environment we are in."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjbv...

Uber NHP starter pack

go.bsky.app/Va3h1Vs

Report: Every dollar of NIH research funding doubles in economic returns Research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) generated $2.46 in economic activity for every $1 of funding in 2023, a total of $92.9 billion, according to an

Terrific piece summarizing a recent report: Every dollar of NIH research funding doubles in economic returns

www.fiercebiotech.com/research/rep...