Thomas Luo

Out today in @nature.com: we show that individual neurons have diverse tuning to a decision variable computed by the entire population, revealing a unifying geometric principle for the encoding of sensory and dynamic cognitive variables.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Large-scale high-density brain-wide neural recording in nonhuman primates - Nature Neuroscience Neuropixels 1.0 NHP is a 45-mm, high-density silicon probe capable of recording large numbers of neurons with single-neuron resolution from most areas in a macaque’s brain.

Our paper on NHP neuropixels is finally out in Nat Neuro! These probes have already been transformative and will usher in a new era of primate neuroscience. I am extremely proud to have played a very small role in this project. I can't wait to see what our community discovers. tinyurl.com/54u3hrj8

GitHub - Julie-Fabre/bombcell: Automated quality control, curation and neuron classification of spike-sorted electrophysiology data Automated quality control, curation and neuron classification of spike-sorted electrophysiology data - Julie-Fabre/bombcell

🚀 We are excited to share that bombcell is now available in Python! 🐍 Automatically sort your units into good/MUA/noise/non-somatic using quality metrics and interpretable & adjustable classification thresholds.
pip install and play around with our toy dataset:
🔗 github.com/Julie-Fabre/...

My latest Aronov lab paper is now published @Nature!

When a chickadee looks at a distant location, the same place cells activate as if it were actually there 👁️

The hippocampus encodes where the bird is looking, AND what it expects to see next -- enabling spatial reasoning from afar

bit.ly/3HvWSum

Molecular hydrogen in the extremely metal- and dust-poor galaxy Leo P - Nature Observations from the JWST MIRI-MRS instrument reveal the detection of rotational emission from molecular hydrogen near the only O-type star in the 3% solar metallicity galaxy Leo P, providing confirm...

Delighted that the first paper from our Cy2 JWST program was published today, reporting the discovery of molecular hydrogen in the 3% Solar metallicity galaxy Leo P. This was a very fun project with @karinsandstrom.bsky.social strom.bsky.social and fabulous co-authors! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Tired of your boring old DDM? Check out recent work by grad student @ryguy.io that introduces a *state-dependent* DDM using an underlying HMM. We find mice change their speed-accuracy strategy from trial to trial! Code provided! (in Julia of course!)

we're crowd-sourcing a searchable repository of tangible benefits stemming from federally-funded research. Come enjoy the great stories; or send in an idea; or volunteer to join the team.

publicusaresearchbenefits.com

please share and re-share so we get more great stories in there!

Calling all science advocates!! Carlos Brody+ are creating a searchable database of tangible science benefits, and they need you.

publicusaresearchbenefits.com

They are asking for suggestions - from brief to lengthy. The database is state-searchable, so all 50 states.

Please spread the word!

Federal Funding Freeze: Share Your Story Trump's funding freeze is causing chaos and harming Americans. Share your story to build the movement.

(2/3)
MAKE NOISE:
1. Share your story. Post how NSF funding has impacted your research or your life. Use #WithoutNSF to raise your voice.

2. Share your story on the Federal Freeze Tracker to help lawmakers and the public understand what’s at stake:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

So impressed by this amazing new paper answering a fundamental question about the brain:

I'll be at the Philadelphia event!

A neural mechanism for learning from delayed postingestive feedback - Nature Illness signals from the gut reactivate and strengthen flavour representations in the amygdala to support learning from delayed postingestive feedback.

How do we associate the flavors we experience during a meal 🍽️😋 with postingestive effects like food poisoning 🤢🤮 that arise much later?

Our answer in @nature.com this week: Illness signals from the gut reactivate and strengthen flavor representations in the amygdala.

📄: nature.com/articles/s41...

Trump administration advances immigration crackdown on foreign student protesters Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that his department has revoked the student visas of hundreds of students so far, with plans to cancel more.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that his department has revoked the student visas of hundreds of students so far, with plans to cancel more.

Bayesian inference by visuomotor neurons in the prefrontal cortex | PNAS Perceptual judgments of the environment emerge from the concerted activity of neural populations in decision-making areas downstream of the sensory...

Out today in PNAS! We asked how Bayesian inference is implemented in macaque prefrontal cortex www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Individual variability of neural computations underlying flexible decisions - Nature Behavioural experiments to study decision-making in response to context-dependent accumulation of evidence provide testable models that are consistent with the heterogeneity in neural signatures among...

1/7 Our paper on individual variability in decision-making is finally out in @nature.com! Inspired by the classic work by Mante and Sussillo, we trained many rats to solve context-dependent decision-making, and we found that different brains use different neural mechanisms to solve the same task!

I think about this a lot. Thanks @behrenstimb.bsky.social for the wonderfully 90s-vibe blog full of wisdom!

users.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/~behrens/Sta...

Hi friends, If you haven't seen it already, I was part of a mess this week — about science in the United States, and about NIH research aimed at understanding things like Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, autism, and depression.

🧪 Thread with some details. 🧠📈 🧠🤖
1/10

Standing up for science here at the New Jersey State House!

Want to learn why some neuroscientists are Standing Up for Science on March 7th? ⬇️☀️

Thank you to @thetransmitter.bsky.social for the feature!

#standupforscience2025

I am very proud to announce that my PhD paper finally came out in Cell! In this *very* collaborative study, we develop and release a deep-learning approach to predict neuron type identity from their electrical signature. doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... 1/16 🧵

Stand up for Science rally March 7th noon-2pm Trenton, NJ State Capitol Plaza standupforscience2025.org

It’s happening, New Jersey! It’s time to rally for science!

Join researchers across the country in fighting restrictions on the NIH Please click the link to complete this form.

Academic workers across the country are organizing to call on our congressional representatives on Thursday, 1/30, at 3pm ET / 12pm PT to demand these restrictions be lifted immediately.
There will be a training over zoom at the beginning of the event.
Join us!
form.jotform.com/250226137228...

The unbearable slowness of being: Humans still clock in at just 10 bits/s. Even after peer review :) Share link: authors.elsevier.com/a/1kHVa3BtfH.... ArXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234

1/ I work in #NeuroAI, a growing field of research, which many people have only the haziest conception of...

As way of introduction to this research approach, I'll provide here a very short thread outlining the definition of the field I gave recently at our BRAIN NeuroAI workshop at the NIH.

🧠📈

My lab has been working on comparing neural representations for the past few years - methods like RSA, CKA, CCA, Procrustes distance

We are often asked: What do these things tell us about the system's function? How do they relate to decoding?

Our new paper has some answers arxiv.org/abs/2411.08197

Woo hoo! 1K new followers, welcome to 💙🦋!

For science-minded folks, there are some very cool tricks 🚀…

If you use any of these emojis: 👩‍🔬|👩🏻‍🔬|👩🏼‍🔬|👩🏽‍🔬|👩🏾‍🔬|👩🏿‍🔬 your post will index on a Women in STEM feed

If you use 🧪 a Science feed

If you use 🧠 a Neuroscience feed

Go get it 🚀🧪🧠👩‍🔬💙🎊

Dopaminergic computations for perceptual decisions Studies linking the brain’s dopamine signals with learning and decision making have enjoyed enormous progress using predominantly value-based decision…

We wrote a short review on Dopaminergic computations for perceptual decisions with Sam Liebana and Matthias Fritsche. Hope it is useful for some. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti.... #neuroscience 🧪🧠