Dominik Straub

Screenshot of job ad: How do Bayesian brains acquire priors? APPLICATIONS CLOSE 20/4/2026 11:55 PM Summary of the Project This project explores how the brain constructs perceptual experience from visual input, focusing on the role of Bayesian models in perception. A key challenge in vision science is understanding how humans interpret complex scenes from the limited information available in retinal images. Modern theories suggest that perception involves probabilistic inference, where the brain integrates sensory signals with prior expectations to make sense of the world. However, the origins and nature of these expectations remain poorly understood. This research aims to advance our understanding of perceptual experience by examining how structured patterns in visual input can inform models of perception. The work spans computational modelling and experimental approaches to uncover principles that explain how visual systems interpret properties such as shape, material, and lighting from images. By addressing fundamental questions about perception, this project will contribute to psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, offering insights into how biological and artificial systems can learn to interpret complex environments.

I'm looking for a skilled PhD student who doesn't want to work too hard but still do great science:
unisc-cp.enquire.cloud/round/RND-00...

I will be at #cosyne2026 next week presenting some new work on "Simultaneous sensorimotor and contextual inference"

www.cosyne.org/poster-sessi...

Looking forward to seeing many familiar and new faces in Lisbon!

Academics Need to Wake Up on AI Ten theses for folks who haven't noticed the ground shifting under their feet

I'm not gonna touch most of this but two things:
1. The apprenticeship model of science was never supposed to be about the PI's workflow. The point isn't to have research assistants to help to publish stuff faster. Training the next generation researcher *is* the point. Because we care. Allegedly.

I think it's because they usually assume that you're also rational...

Why is touch perceived as weaker during movement?

In our new preprint 📝, we examine tactile suppression during reaching.

Using optimal control theory, we show that tactile suppression reflects dynamic, uncertainty-dependent integration of forward model predictions and sensory feedback.

Yes, please see Fabian's reply to your original post: bsky.app/profile/fata...

Sam Altman tweet: Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network. In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome. AI safety and wide distribution of benefits are the core of our mission. Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement. We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should, which the DoW also wanted. We will deploy FDEs to help with our models and to ensure their safety, we will deploy on cloud networks only. We are asking the DoW to offer these same terms to all AI companies, which in our opinion we think everyone should be willing to accept. We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements. We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can. The world is a complicated, messy, and sometimes dangerous place.

My goodness.

It’s time to turn towards the motor control side of interoception!

Why are tactile sensations suppressed during movements? In our new preprint, we explain this as optimal integration of sensory signals with an internal model.

Work led by @fatatai.bsky.social with Dimitris Voudouris, Katja Fiehler and @c-rothkopf.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

In light of the current funding situation (worldwide), a modest proposal: instead of pouring billions of dollars into GenAI claiming "it *could* accelerate science and research," consider putting 1% of that amount in what *will* accelerate science and research. Namely, funding science and research.

Even if bots may not have been a problem in online behavioural datasets 2-3 years ago, we should still be careful about generalizing between online studies and lab studies. See our study on dataset bias: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

**Postdoc position in human category learning**

@thecharleywu.bsky.social, Frank Jäkel and I are seeking a postdoctoral fellow to lead a joint project on human category learning at the Centre for Cognitive Science @tuda.bsky.social.

www.career.tu-darmstadt.de/tu-darmstadt...

Flyer for 2026 edition of the European Summer School "Visual Neuroscience" in Rauischholzhausen castle, Germany.

The European Summer School "Visual Neuroscience" in Rauischholzhausen castle, Germany, is coming back in 2026!

Deadline: 8 March 2026

www.allpsych.uni-giessen.de/rauisch/

🚨Four postdoc positions at the #ReasonableAI excellence cluster @tuda.bsky.social!
jobs.rhein-main-universitaeten.de/rmu/job/52370
Please share widely 🙏

Useful reminder!

Secretly, everything is running on symbolic logic and probabilistic inference and that is why they're mostly publishing on neural networks?

Vibe coding kills open source.
Our most direct title yet. @koren.mk @julianhi.nz @aaron-lohmann.bsky.social
Theory paper with numbers and policy recs. First at arxiv.org/abs/2601.15494
Comments welcome.

@ceu-economics.bsky.social @kiel.institute

Misspecified models create the appearance of adaptive control during value-based choice - Communications Psychology In a new computational analysis of previous work, this study shows that a control-free mechanism better accounts for value-based decisions than an account that assumes top-down control invigorating th...

Final paper of my PhD 🤗

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

There is growing interest in how cognitive control may improve value-based decision making.

However, we find that a recent paper overestimated the role of control in their task, leading to erroneous interpretations of dACC recordings.

AI is not a peer, so it can’t do peer review If we still believe that science is a vocation grounded in argument, curiosity and care, we can’t delegate judgement to machines, says Akhil Bhardwaj

Nice article but the social dynamics of science mean that peer review is de facto a "throughout problem". LLM usage in PR will increase because it reduces pressures on overstretched researchers. We can't stop LLM PR without addressing those pressures.

www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/ai-n...

Encrypted Rich text CryptPad: end-to-end encrypted collaboration suite

+++ Teilt und unterschreibt unseren offenen Brief an die Hessische Landesregierung! +++ Wir werden die bevorstehende katastrophale Verschlechterung unseres Hochschulsystems nicht hinnehmen und fordern eine Neuverhandlung des Hochschulpakts! #nocuts #nocutsinhessen cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/...

Heute, 28.01.2026 Beratungsablauf Heute, 28.01.2026 Uhrzeit Beratungsablauf 10.25 bis 12 Uhr Stellenprofile und Department-Strukturen an Hochschulen Ausschuss für Forschung, Technologie und Technikfolgenabschätzung - live -

#IchBinHanna ist heute Thema im Forschungsausschuss des Bundestags -- & Ihr könnt live dabei sein! Fachgespräch wird via Livestream übertragen (endlich wieder Parlamentsfernsehen): www.bundestag.de/mediathek/live Sachverständige u.a. @frauforschung.bsky.social & @rosefeldt.bsky.social. #WissZeitVG

YouTube video by media.ccc.de 39C3 - AI Agent, AI Spy

Important talk by @meredithmeredith.bsky.social and @udbhav-tiwari.bsky.social at #39c3 on the risks of AI agents in operating systems

youtu.be/0ANECpNdt-4?...

2025: A Review of the Year in Neuroscience Enlightening the brain

Just published my review of neuroscience in 2025, on The Spike.

The 10th of these, would you believe?

This year we have foundation models, breakthroughs in using light to understand the brain, a gene therapy, and more

Enjoy!

medium.com/the-spike/20...

Wer liegt hier wem auf der Tasche? Das Bürgergeld ist Geschichte. An seine Stelle tritt eine Grundsicherung, die auf kalkulierten Verfassungsbruch setzt. Totalsanktionen, V...

Was fiese Flegel und Lobbyverbände mit den Verschärfungen bei der Grundsicherung zu tun haben, erfahrt ihr in meinem Talk beim diesjährigen #39c3. media.ccc.de/v/39c3-wer-l...

AI-generated content in Wikipedia - a tale of caution - media.ccc.de I successfully failed with a literature related project and accidentally built a ChatGPT detector. Then I spoke to the people who uploade...

Videotipp: AI-generated content in Wikipedia - a tale of caution
By Mathias Schindler
media.ccc.de/v/39c3-ai-ge...
#39c3

I'll start replying to my emails like this.

#science #academia #academic #philosophy #philsky

Context Widows or, of GPUs, LPUs, and Goal Displacement

Absolutely essential piece by @kevinbaker.bsky.social critiquing AI automation of science by pulling back the curtain on what modern science actually is. LLMs already replicate and accelerate its irrational bureaucratic structure.

person speaks into microphone at front of an auditorium

person points at screen

person points at screen

person points at screen

Last month, our new Simons Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience (SCENE) held their first annual meeting at the foundation. Learn more about SCENE: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/neuroscience/simons-collaboration-on-ecological-neuroscience/ #science #neuroscience

YouTube video by Etymology Nerd You're Inventing Last Names. #linguistics #names #etymology #language

@etymologynerd.bsky.social also made this observation in a short video recently: youtube.com/shorts/RsQA1...

This a pretty funny encapsulation of ai scientist work. The authors hand it some softball software tasks, then it comes back with very different results than what it’s replicating and the authors shrug at the data being different

www.nature.com/articles/s43...