Rudy van den Brink

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.

This one looks intriguing. Arousal "embedding" whole-brain dynamics. 🤯

#neuroskyence #compneurosky

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

kermit the frog and darth vader are standing next to each other with the words give yourself to the dark side below them ALT: kermit the frog and darth vader are standing next to each other with the words give yourself to the dark side below them

If you are (or know) a hardworking student with a background in machine learning or computational neuroscience (loosely defined),

and want to do a PhD while learning more about methods and problems in the respective other fields,

don’t hesitate to reach out.

What complexity of algorithms can AI compute? In a new paper with colleagues at IBM Research, we explore how circuit complexity theory can help quantify the degree of algorithmic generalization in AI systems. www.nature.com/articles/s42...
@natmachintell.nature.com
#ML #AI #MLSky
1/n

You may have to open your DMs to receive messages from people you don't follow. In any case, feel free to reach out!

High-level visual representations in the human brain are aligned with large language models - Nature Machine Intelligence Doerig, Kietzmann and colleagues show that the brain’s response to visual scenes can be modelled using language-based AI representations. By linking brain activity to caption-based embeddings from lar...

🚨 Finally out in Nature Machine Intelligence!!
"Visual representations in the human brain are aligned with large language models"
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Confirmation bias through selective readout of information encoded in human parietal cortex - Nature Communications People often discard incoming information when it contradicts their pre-existing beliefs about the world. Here, the authors show that this discarded information is precisely encoded in the brain, but ...

New paper in @natcomms.nature.com: “Confirmation bias through selective readout of information encoded in human parietal cortex” (rdcu.be/etlR7) from my work in Donner lab. Jointly lead by Hame Park, Ayelet Arazi, & me, together with Marco Celotto, Stefano Panzeri, Alan Stocker and Tobias Donner. 🧵👇🏽

Autonomic physiological coupling of the global fMRI signal Nature Neuroscience - The brain and body are necessarily connected. Here the authors show that brain blood flow and electrical activity are coupled with systemic physiological changes in the body.

First post on an exciting new manuscript online today @natneuro.nature.com - in collab with @lucinauddin.bsky.social and Catie Chang. We take a fresh look at the physiological dynamics associated with the global signal 🧠 ...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Read here:
rdcu.be/ek01F

Against Language Barriers: A Call to Protect International Education in Dutch Academia

An open letter supporting the international bachelor’s psychology programs threatened for cuts. Proceeding with these cuts would damage some of the most important and impactful psychology departments globally. #supportdutchpsychology

openletter.earth/against-lang...

Dissociable encoding of evolving beliefs and momentary belief updates in distinct neural decision signals - Nature Communications People are capable of making near-optimal decisions in volatile, changing environments. Here, the authors show how two neural decision signals encode distinct aspects of the belief updating process un...

Very happy to share this paper, now published in
@natcomms.nature.com! nature.com/articles/s41...
With @spk3lly.bsky.social and @neuromurphy.bsky.social, we investigated the neural computations that allow us to make near-optimal decisions in changing environments. Here's a short summary:

Introducing a new tool from @tsbolt.bsky.social, find-viz (FMRI Interactive Navigation and Discovery Viewer)! It’s a browser-based visualization tool built with one purpose in mind: get researchers to spend more time looking at their fMRI data 🧠 @ohbmofficial.bsky.social @ohbmtrainees.bsky.social

A prospective code for value in the serotonin system - Nature Merging ideas from reinforcement learning theory with recent insights into the filtering properties of the dorsal raphe nucleus, a unifying perspective is found explaining why serotonin neurons are ac...

I'm excited to share that the last chapter of my PhD thesis is now published in Nature! 🍾

What drives serotonin neurons? We think it's the expectation of future reward and --- critically --- how fast this expectation is increasing. 📈

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

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Disentangling sources of variability in decision-making - Nature Reviews Neuroscience Identifying the psychological and neurobiological processes underpinning intra-individual variations in choice behaviour presents a formidable challenge. In this Review, Duffy et al. discuss how algor...

In life, 3 things are certain: death, taxes, and decision-making variability🧠. Our review tinyurl.com/4dcwafc4 explores how computational models 💻 explain variability, their limits, and recent advances. A thread🧵👇

@redmondoconnell.bsky.social @neuromurphy.bsky.social Mark Bellgrove (not on Bluesky)

New preprint (#neuroscience #deeplearning doi.org/10.1101/2025...)! We trained 20 DCNNs on 941235 images with varying scene segmentation (original. object-only, silhouette, background-only). Despite object recognition varying (27-53%), all networks showed similar EEG prediction.

A new Python toolbox called HSSM simplifies working with Hierarchical Sequential Sampling Models (HSSMs) to understand how we accumulate evidence and make choices. Built on PyMC, Bambi, & ArviZ. Check it out! #cognitivescience #python #decisionmaking

edspace.american.edu/openbehavior...

Dynamic consensus-building between neocortical areas via long-range connections The neocortex is organized into functionally specialized areas. While the functions and underlying neural circuitry of individual neocortical areas are well studied, it is unclear how these regions op...

For my first Bluesky post, I'm very excited to share a thread on our recent work with Mitra Javadzadeh, investigating how connections between cortical areas shape computations in the neocortex! [1/7] www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hey Bsky friends on #neuroskyence! Very excited to share our
@iclr-conf.bsky.social paper: TopoNets! High-performing vision and language models with brain-like topography! Expertly led by grad student Mayukh and Mainak! A brief thread...

This account is for sharing info with US scientists, both extramural and intramural to NIH, about attacks on science in the US.

Education is power, and we can help advocate for science and medicine together. 💪🧪

We are a team of NIH people. Please ask us questions you might have.

The architecture of the human default mode network explored through cytoarchitecture, wiring and signal flow - Nature Neuroscience The default mode network (DMN) is implicated in cognition and behavior. Here, the authors show that the DMN is cytoarchitecturally heterogeneous, it contains regions receptive to input from the sensor...

The architecture of the human default mode network explored through cytoarchitecture, wiring and signal flow
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience

Across 18 studies, the meta-analysis shows moderate evidence against an effect of taVNS on pupil dilation

Stimulation effects of taVNS on pupil dilation depend on the use of a phasic vs. conventional protocol.

Does tVNS elicit replicable effects beyond BOLD responses in the brainstem? Yes, pulsed, but not conventional tVNS leads to robust pupil dilation in our new meta-analysis.

Published in Brain Stim w/ @cecivez.bsky.social @akuehnel.bsky.social #neuroskyence 🩺
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

2025: Agency gained and lost If you’ve had even a passing glance at tech journalism over the past few months, you know the top buzzword for AI in 2025 is agentic. Agentic AI (according to many think pieces and press releases a…

I wrote about the concept of agency (both human and artificial) in the year 2025. gracewlindsay.com/2025/01/24/2...

Week one in Trumpland: The first step is seeing what’s in front of our faces We should resist the voices attempting to tell us it’s all fine

I wrote this about the media's first big test of Trump 2.0, and how poorly it scored. On the tedious, vital work of seeing what's in front of our faces for the next four years.

www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle-co...

"exhaust fumes" made it into the official abstract!

hence completing the journey from an epiphenomenal shitpost blog to a full-blown review paper.

all thanks to this cast of co-authors (esp. Sander), our TICS editor Lindsey Drayton, and two very engaged reviewers (@danielemarinazzo.bsky.social)

Holy shit, a classic indeed! It has everything: neuromodulation through gain modulation and a proof of concept with an RNN trained through back prop 🤯😍

Is the impact of spontaneous movements on early visual cortex species specific? Recent studies in non-human primates do not find pronounced signals related to the animal’s own body movements in the responses of neurons in the visu…

Recent studies found pronounced neuromodulation in the early visual cortex due to locomotion and spontaneous body movements in mice but not in non-human primates. We reconciled this dichotomy in this new open-access feature review @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Help bluesky neurohivemind!

If you know of any computational / theoretical work modelling neuromodulators please share it 🙏 if you don't, please retweet!

Circuit mechanisms for the chemical modulation of cortex-wide network interactions and behavioral variability Catecholamines and acetylcholine have dissociable effects on large-scale cortical network activity and behavior.

More recent still: www.science.org/doi/full/10....

The Role of Locus Coeruleus in the Regulation of Cognitive Performance Noradrenergic locus coeruleus (LC) neurons were recorded in monkeys performing a visual discrimination task, and a computational model was developed addressing the role of the LC brain system in cogni...

Slightly more recently: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A Network Model of Catecholamine Effects: Gain, Signal-to-Noise Ratio, and Behavior At the level of individual neurons, catecholamine release increases the responsivity of cells to excitatory and inhibitory inputs. A model of catecholamine effects in a network of neural-like elements...

A classic:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Functional locus coeruleus imaging to investigate an ageing noradrenergic system - Communications Biology Functional locus coeruleus (LC) imaging revealed that older adults exhibited increased LC activation compared to younger adults, indicating possible compensatory overactivation of a structurally decli...

Functional #locuscoeruleus imaging, #fmri, to investigate an #ageing noradrenergic system

📑 link to paper:
www.nature.com/articles/s42...

🧵 see thread below

#Neuroimaging crowd, hear me out! 👀
Did you ever want to add #EyeTracking to your #fMRI study but found it too much hassle? Got existing data you’d love to add eye tracking to?

Consider trying out *MR-based eye tracking* (i.e. inferring gaze from eye voxels)!

Here is a 🧵 with a few options!👇 1/9