Anno Kurth

Vectorized instructive signals in cortical dendrites - Nature Mice learning a neurofeedback brain–computer interface task show neuron-specific teaching signals in cortical dendrites, consistent with a vectorized solution for credit assignment in the brain.

This paper on how the brain may do gradient descent is very cool: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How can RNNs learn continuously without forgetting? 🧠
Our new preprint shows how a predictive learning rule organizes recurrent dynamics into orthogonal manifolds, reducing task interference.
Congrats Zihan @zihan-liu.bsky.social !
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🧪🧠 New preprint: helping resolve a decades-long debate in synaptic plasticity

NMDA receptors are central to Hebbian learning. Yet for >30 years, the existence and function of presynaptic NMDA receptors have remained controversial.

📄 doi.org/10.64898/202...

1/6

… you need a cell of that type to read the code correctly. So the explanation is circular. Did I get this right?

Thanks for the reply. I am not arguing against your point by the way! I think what you wrote connects to my reply, right? Adding the part that the code supposedly explains differences. And (just to get your argument straight) the problem here lies in saying that the code describes a cell, but …

Learning sculpts orthogonal task manifolds for continual skill learning in recurrent networks https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.15.705283v1

Fascinating! But could you expand a bit on the incoherence? Self-referentiality is not necessarily incoherent. Or is the argument that viewing the genomic code as a **complete** description of an organism is incoherent since it requires a cell of that organism to be „organism-correctly“ interpreted.

Zajzon, Bouhadjar, Fabre, Schmidt, Ostendorf, Neftci, Morrison, Duarte: SymSeqBench: a unified framework for the generation and analysis of rule-based symbolic sequences and datasets https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.24977 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.24977 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.24977

Retinotopy constrains the topology of neural manifolds in macaque visual cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.22.695909v1

Point of no returns: researchers are crossing a threshold in the fight for funding With so little money to go round, the costs of competing for grants can exceed what the grants are worth. When that happens, nobody wins.

This report in Nature on the costs of competing for & administering scientific grants is shocking: "In other words, European taxpayers will have spent more on the funding process than on the funding itself, and the scientific ecosystem has been drained." www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

SAVE THE DATE! On June 16-17, 2026, the NEST Initiative is excited to invite everyone interested in Neural Simulation Technology and the NEST Simulator to the NEST virtual Conference 2026. Registration and abstract submission will open soon!
nest-simulator.org/conference

0/10 Thanks for the interest in our preprint. Some takes say it negates or fully supports the “manifold hypothesis”, neither quite right. Our results show that if you only focus on the manifold capturing most of task-related variance, you could miss important dynamics that actually drive behavior.

Y’all are reading this paper in the wrong way.

We love to trash dominant hypothesis, but we need to look for evidence against the manifold hypothesis elsewhere:

This elegant work doesn't show neural dynamics are high D, nor that we should stop using PCA

It’s quite the opposite!

(thread)

Really impressive for the brain.
I am no expert but teeth look rather 🐱-ish 🤔

Plateau potentials are instructive signals for behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity in the neocortex Learning occurs via the adjustment of synaptic weights across a variety of timescales. The mechanisms supporting these processes, from single-shot to iterative learning, are unclear. The prevailing mo...

BTSP in V1
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A study led by Cina Aghamohammadi is now out in ‪@natcomms.nature.com‬! We developed a mathematical framework for partitioning spiking variability, which revealed that spiking irregularity is nearly invariant for each neuron and decreases along the cortical hierarchy.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Undecided which workshop to attend at #BernsteinConference ?

We put together a stellar lineup for a satellite workshop on the effects of top-down signals on neuronal dynamics! 🧠✨📣

Join us tomorrow in room 0.101 !

bernstein-network.de/bernstein-co...

With @ackurth.bsky.social

On the first workshop talk (Monday), I'll make the case that everything might be everywhere when you decode, but that is not the end of the story: different regions have very different dynamics and encoding geometries.

This workshop is organized by @aitormg.bsky.social and @ackurth.bsky.social

Jonas Oberste-Frielinghaus, Anno C. Kurth, Julian G\"oltz, Laura Kriener, Junji Ito, Mihai A. Petrovici, Sonja Gr\"un: Synchronization and semantization in deep spiking networks https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12975 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.12975 https://arxiv.org/html/2508.12975

Jakob Stubenrauch, Naomi Auer, Richard Kempter, Benjamin Lindner: Stochastic synaptic dynamics under learning https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.13846 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.13846 https://arxiv.org/html/2508.13846

The challenge of defining a neural population Our current approach is largely arbitrary. We need new methods for grouping cells, ideally by their dynamics.

Our current approach to defining neural populations is largely arbitrary. We need new methods for grouping cells, ideally by their dynamics, writes @markdhumphries.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...

„What do you mean by ‘effect size’?”

Sensory responses of visual cortical neurons are not prediction errors Predictive coding is theorized to be a ubiquitous cortical process to explain sensory responses. It asserts that the brain continuously predicts sensory information and imposes those predictions on lo...

1/3) This may be a very important paper, it suggests that there are no prediction error encoding neurons in sensory areas of cortex:

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

I personally am a big fan of the idea that cortical regions (allo and neo) are doing sequence prediction.

But...

🧠📈 🧪

Undecided whether to attend the #BernsteinConference2025 ?

@ackurth.bsky.social and myself put together a stellar lineup for a satellite workshop on the effects of top-down signals on neuronal dynamics! 🧠✨📣

bernstein-network.de/bernstein-co...

Spontaneous spiking statistics form unique area-specific fingerprints and reflect the hierarchy of cerebral cortex The cerebral cortex, from sensory to higher cognitive areas, is hierarchically organised Several dynamical and anatomical measures, such as timescales and neurotransmitter receptor expression, have in...

New preprint alert 📣📣📣

New results showing how strong the link between brain dynamics and structure is 💫👀🧪

"Spontaneous spiking statistics form unique area-specific fingerprints and reflect the hierarchy of cerebral cortex" 🐾🧠
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Geometric interpretation of Singular Angle Similarity (SAS). Matrices Ma (red) and Mb (blue). Their eigenvectors scaled by the square root of their eigenvalues span the main axes of ellipsoids. These square matrices capture the correlation structure of along the horizontal and vertical axis, respectively (double-headed colored arrows). SAS compares the angles between the corresponding ellipsoids (dashed colored arrows).

📣 New & better method to compare matrices just dropped! 📣

Ever wanted to compare things like connectivity matrices or large matrices of neuron responses in trials? There is a new way to do so in town ✨🧪

Singular Angle Similarity (SAS)
journals.aps.org/prxlife/abst...

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The NEST virtual conference is gearing up! Join us June 17-18, 2025 for a chance to exchange ideas and learn about developments in simulation science! Interested in contributing? The abstract submission deadline has been extended to **April 30**. Visit nest-simulator.org/conference. #nestsim

Picture of neural manifolds for the two choices in a decision-making task, depicted in 3D and in 2D

New preprint: "The geometry of the neural state space of decisions", work by Mauro Monsalve-Mercado, buff.ly/42wVHD5. Surprising results & predictions! (Thread) We analyze neuropixel population recordings in macaque area LIP during a reaction time, random-dot motion 1/

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

DAY 10: Advent of Comp Neuro 🎄🤖🧠🧪

Modular spiking networks that are connected randomly usually fail to propagate signals, but there is a way to overcome this: topographic connectivity!

"Passing the Message: Representation Transfer in Modular Balanced Networks"
www.frontiersin.org/journals/com...