Talia Konkle

AI and Neuroscience | IVADO

I’m looking for interns to join our lab for a project on foundation models in neuroscience.

Funded by @ivado.bsky.social and in collaboration with the IVADO regroupement 1 (AI and Neuroscience: ivado.ca/en/regroupem...).

Interested? See the details in the comments. (1/3)

🧠🤖

2) Multimodal self-supervised world modeling in interactive embodied situations.

Here’s related work from the lab that we’ll be building on: bsky.app/profile/hafe...

The curriculum effect in visual learning: the role of readout dimensionality Generalization of visual perceptual learning (VPL) to unseen conditions varies across tasks. Previous work suggests that training curriculum may be integral to generalization, yet a theoretical explan...

🚨 New preprint alert!

🧠🤖
We propose a theory of how learning curriculum affects generalization through neural population dimensionality. Learning curriculum is a determining factor of neural dimensionality - where you start from determines where you end up.
🧠📈

A 🧵:

tinyurl.com/yr8tawj3

Excellent funding opportunity: $100k/year for two years for a postdoc position in Montreal. Apply if you're interested in joining Montreal's thriving #NeuroAI ecosystem.

So excited to see this preprint released from the lab into the wild.

Charlotte has developed a theory for how learning curriculum influences learning generalization.
Our theory makes straightforward neural predictions that can be tested in future experiments. (1/4)

🧠🤖 🧠📈 #MLSky

Kempner Research Fellowship - Kempner Institute The Kempner brings leading, early-stage postdoctoral scientists to Harvard to work on projects that advance the fundamental understanding of intelligence.

⌛️ Deadline approaching!

Applications for the #KempnerInstitute Research Fellowships close Oct. 1.

We welcome postdocs exploring the foundations of #intelligence or applications of #AI to apply.

👉 Learn more & apply: bit.ly/3UvpSpe
#LLMs #NeuroAI #ML

A feedforward mechanism for human-like contour integration Author summary A central challenge in vision science is understanding how the visual system links fragmented local features into coherent object representations. One foundational process supporting th...

This paper shows that some human "gestalt" style visual processing can emerge in purely feedforward deep nets with the right inductive biases and fine-tuning:

journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

🧠📈 🧪 #NeuroAI

The Algonauts Challenge submission is over: > 60 teams participated! To be considered in the winners selection process, please post your report/code by July 25th. We will announce the winners on August 5th!

#NeuroAI #CompNeuro #neuroscience #AI #CCN2025 #hessianAI #CNeuroMod

algonautsproject.com

Excited to announce the Foundation Models for the Brain and Body workshop at #NeurIPS2025! 🧠📈 🧪

We invite short papers or interactive demos on AI for neural, physiological or behavioral data.

Submit by Aug 22 👉 brainbodyfm-workshop.github.io

Exciting new preprint from the lab: “Adopting a human developmental visual diet yields robust, shape-based AI vision”. A most wonderful case where brain inspiration massively improved AI solutions.

Work with @zejinlu.bsky.social @sushrutthorat.bsky.social and Radek Cichy

arxiv.org/abs/2507.03168

Announcement: Workshop at #CCN2025
🧠 Modeling the Physical Brain: Spatial Organization & Biophysical Constraints
🗓️ Monday, Aug 11 | 🕦 11:30–18:00 CET | 📍 Room A2.07
🔗 Register: tinyurl.com/CCN-physical...
#NeuroAI @cogcompneuro.bsky.social

So excited that our excellence cluster 'The Adaptive Mind' got funded! 🥳 Looking forward to lots of great science and projects! #TheAdaptiveMind #ExcellenceInitiative 👁️🧠🤖

Applications are open for the 2025 Flatiron Institute Junior Theoretical Neuroscience Workshop! A two-day workshop 7/10-7/11 in NYC for PhD students and postdocs. All travel paid. Apply by April 14th.🧠🗽🧑‍🔬http://jtnworkshop2025.flatironinstitute.org/
@flatironinstitute.org @simonsfoundation.org

New preprint “Monkey See, Model Knew: LLMs accurately predict visual responses in humans AND NHPs”
Led by Colin Conwell with @emaliemcmahon.bsky.social Akshay Jagadeesh, Kasper Vinken @amrahs-inolas.bsky.social @jacob-prince.bsky.social George Alvarez @taliakonkle.bsky.social & Marge Livingstone 1/n

I am excited to share that my undergraduate research has now been accepted to #ICLR2025.
📎: openreview.net/pdf?id=wMgr7...
🧑‍💻: github.com/BashivanLab/...

Tweeprint🧵⬇️

In the physical world, almost all information is transmitted through traveling waves -- why should it be any different in your neural network?

Super excited to share recent work with the brilliant @mozesjacobs.bsky.social: "Traveling Waves Integrate Spatial Information Through Time"

1/14

People talk a lot about objects, but what about the softness of a cushion, the greenness of an emerald, or the viscosity of oil? In our work just published @pnas.org, we shed light on how we make sense of the hundreds of materials around us.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Global modules robustly emerge from local interactions and smooth gradients - Nature The principle of peak selection is described, by which local interactions and smooth gradients drive self-organization of discrete global modules.

1/ Our paper appeared in @Nature today! www.nature.com/articles/s41... w/ Fiete Lab and @khonamikail.bsky.social .
Explains emergence of multiple grid cell modules, w/ excellent match to data! Novel mechanism for applying across vast systems from development to ecosystems. 🧵👇

Episodic and associative memory from spatial scaffolds in the hippocampus - Nature A neocortical–entorhinal–hippocampal network model based on grid cell states recapitulates experimental results and reconciles the spatial, associative and episodic memory roles of the hippocampus.

1/ Super-excited to share our new work “Episodic and associative memory from spatial scaffolds in the hippocampus”, that just appeared in Nature! www.nature.com/articles/s41... Key insights and ideas 👇#tweeprint

CCN 2025 Area Chair Nomination Area Chairs nominated to serve for the 8-page conference proceedings track at CCN 2025 should meet the following requirements: be a senior researcher (professor, research fellow, postdoc); have author...

CCN 2025 Area Chair Nomination

Intrigued about supporting CCN’s new 8-page conference proceedings track? 📄

Fill out this form to nominate yourself or a colleague to act as (Senior) Area Chair at CCN25.

forms.gle/MTBgZZxQaDY8...

For #CCN2025 in Amsterdam, we will, for the first time, have conference proceedings that include both full length peer-reviewed papers and the traditional 2-page track!

Deadlines for submissions: 17th February for full papers ( abstract only; full paper on 20th FEB) & 10th April for 2 pagers.

It is very convenient to be able to point people to @neuromatch.bsky.social materials to get them up to speed for a compneuro modeling project. All computational fields should create one of these courses!

(except climate science, deep learning, and neuroAI for which we also already have them!)

Monkey See, Model Knew: LLMs accurately Predict Human AND Macaque Visual Brain Activity
Colin Conwell, @emaliemcmahon.bsky.social, Akshay Vivek Jagadeesh, Kasper Vinken, @amrahs-inolas.bsky.social, @jacob-prince.bsky.social, George Alvarez, @taliakonkle.bsky.social and Marge Livingstone

New paper with @leonlufkin.bsky.social and @eringrant.bsky.social!

Why do we see localized receptive fields so often, even in models without sparisity regularization?

We present a theory in the minimal setting from @aingrosso.bsky.social and @sebgoldt.bsky.social

How do a neural network's final parameters depend on its initial ones?


In this new paper, we answer this question by analyzing the training Jacobian, the matrix of derivatives of the final parameters with respect to the initial parameters.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.07003

Ready for #NeurReps2024?

Our schedule at @neuripsconf.bsky.social
is out 📅
neurips.cc/virtual/2024...

Join us this Saturday! 🧠

With @eerosim.bsky.social @taliakonkle.bsky.social Stefanie Jegelka, Srinivas Turaga, Ilker Yildirim and Savannah Thais

Cognitive networks interactions through communication subspaces in large-scale models of the neocortex The neocortex-wide neural activity is organized into distinct networks of areas engaged in different cognitive processes. To elucidate the underlying mechanism of flexible network reconfiguration, we ...

I am excited to share the last work of my postdoc as a Swartz Fellow at NYU on the dynamic routing of large-scale cognitive networks in the neocortex! 🌐🧠 Here's a quick breakdown: 🧵

preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Parallel development of social behavior in biological and artificial fish - Nature Communications The learning algorithms that produce social behavior are unknown. Here the authors show that artificial fish, modeled via embodied deep neural networks, learn the same social behaviors as real fish, s...

Another cool "digital twin" work from Wood’s lab

After the virtual chicks, this time:
"We embodied artificial neural networks in artificial fish and raised the artificial fish in virtual fish tanks that mimicked the rearing conditions of biological fish"

#NeuroAI

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

NEW: we have an exciting opportunity for a tenure-track professor at the #KempnerInstitute and the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Read the full description & apply today: academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/14362
#ML #AI

Wish we had polls here but in their absence: can ML people tell me how they would define "ablation" or "ablation study"?

As someone who frequently translates between neuroscience and ML, I fear this is another term that we both use, but slightly differently. #MLsky