Feng-Kuei Chiang 江峰逵

YouTube video by Neuroscience & Philosophy Salon "Cognition is emergent" by Earl Miller

Talk: Cognition is Emergent - Earl K. Miller
Neuroscience and Philosophy Salon, 9-12-25
youtu.be/Sk4ehOcsDmM?...

Mental graphs structure the storage and retrieval of visuomotor associations - Nature Human Behaviour Trach and McDougle show that motor responses can form part of structured, graph-like memory representations.

In this article, @jetrach.bsky.social and McDougle show that motor responses can form part of structured, graph-like memory representations. @actlab.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

in my first year in grad school, i recall once that my doctoral advisor @dickretired.bsky.social (who somewhat had a reputation of making harsh responses to talks) told an American student in my year that: in the US ppl are all nice, but in the UK we just speak our minds. not having any cultural...

MLIB: an easy-to-use Matlab toolbox for the analysis of extracellular spike data https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.25.645246v1

Sequence chunking through neural encoding of ordinal positions Grouping sensory events into chunks is an efficient strategy to integrate information across long sequences such as speech, music, and complex movemen…

Sequence chunking through neural encoding of ordinal positions www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The geometry of the neural state space of decisions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.24.634806v1

All NIH study sections canceled indefinitely. This will halt science and devastate research budgets in universities.

Great review! Hierarchical, sequential, subgoal-goal, chunking, the keywords I’ve worked on and been challenged for years. Happy to see this as a guide for me to move (DLPFC) forward!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hippocampal neuronal activity is aligned with action plans - Nature Using high-density electrophysiological recordings, how internally generated cell assemblies are updated by action plans to meet external goals is explored.

It’s an incredible feeling to see something you’ve poured your heart into come to life. This work was born from my curiosity about hippocampal “cognitive tuning.”
Our interpretation of the environment depends on our actions, constantly evolving as we pursue our goals

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

Context-dependent decision-making in the primate hippocampal–prefrontal circuit - Nature Neuroscience The brain uses different valuation schemes across contexts. Elston and Wallis show this is supported by hippocampal encoding of context that is broadcast to prefrontal value subcircuits via theta sync...

We value things differently depending on the situation. A fascinating paper shows that the hippocampus feeds contextual information to the prefrontal cortex by altering theta wave phase alignment, enabling the PFC to adjust value judgments accordingly.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience

Linking neural population formatting to function Animals capable of complex behaviors tend to have more distinct brain areas than simpler organisms, and artificial networks that perform many tasks tend to self-organize into modules (1-3). This sugge...

New results for a new year! “Linking neural population formatting to function” describes our modern take on an old question: how can we understand the contribution of a brain area to behavior?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧠👩🏻‍🔬🧪🧵
#neuroskyence
1/

For Maths fans, 2025 is a square.
45² = 45 x 45 = 2025
Also,
9² x 5² = 2025
40² + 20² + 5² = 2025
My favourite?
1³+2³+3³+4³+5³+6³+7³+8³+9³ = 2025
#Mathematics #teaching #education

Neuroscience methods - YouTube Nanocourse: Approaches to Study Neural Circuits This course was taught by Anita Autry, Tiago Gonçalves, and Luke Sjulson at Albert Einstein College of Medici...

Neuroscience students asked us to teach a PRACTICAL course on experimental methods, and it is now on YouTube!

Please like and repost to help us get the word out!

www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Lecture 1: Signals and data acquisition
Focusing on hardware, digital/analog I/O, synchronization
🧵

Some highlights from NIH Brain Initiative NeuroAI discussion.

@kanakarajanphd.bsky.social asked what we need to do over the next 10 years. Andreas Tolias answered that we need an ambitious concerted team science effort to build digital twins and reverse engineer how intelligence works. 1/

Attention-dependent attribute comparisons underlie multi-attribute decision-making in orbitofrontal cortex Economic decisions often require weighing multiple dimensions, or attributes. The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is thought to be important for computing the integrated value of an option from its attribu...

It's so great to see everybody here! 👋

Here's something we've been working on for a while, led by Aster Perkins. There's a long-standing idea in decision-making that the orbitofrontal cortex computes and compares overall values. We found maybe not...

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

Posterior Parietal Cortex Regulates Intrinsic Neural Timescales and Attentional Processing in Frontal Eye Field https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.30.615928v1 Intrinsic neural timescales characterize the dynamics of endogenous fluctuations in neural activity.

Posterior Parietal Cortex Regulates Intrinsic Neural Timescales and Attentional Processing in Frontal Eye Field https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.30.615928v1

Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in macaques guides decisions in different learning contexts https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.18.613767v1 Flexibly adjusting our behavioral strategies based on the environmental context is critical to maxim

Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in macaques guides decisions in different learning contexts https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.18.613767v1

If you see this, quote post with a beach picture from your gallery.

🏖️☀️

Neural populations in macaque anterior cingulate cortex encode social image identities - Nature Communications The anterior cingulate cortex gyrus plays an important role in social cognition. Here authors show that, in a goal-directed task without social reasoning, these neurons differentiate conspecific ident...

After a long slog, my student's paper is finally out!

Our first foray into social cognition asked whether a putative "social" brain area does anything unique with social cues when they're not used for any social reasoning. Turns out it does!

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

Dynamic coding and sequential integration of multiple reward attributes by primate amygdala neurons https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.17.608391v1 The value of visual stimuli guides learning, decision-making and motivation. Although stimulus value

Dynamic coding and sequential integration of multiple reward attributes by primate amygdala neurons https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.17.608391v1

Chunking!!

Optogenetic hedonic hotspots in orbitofrontal cortex and insula: causing enhancement of sweetness liking https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.31.606067v1 Hedonic hotspots are brain subregions that causally amplify the hedonic impact of palatable tastes,

Optogenetic hedonic hotspots in orbitofrontal cortex and insula: causing enhancement of sweetness liking https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.31.606067v1

Cognitive sequences in obsessive-compulsive disorder are supported by frontal cortex ramping activity and mediated by symptom severity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.28.605508v1 Completing sequences is a part of everyday life. Many such sequences can be considered abstract - th

Cognitive sequences in obsessive-compulsive disorder are supported by frontal cortex ramping activity and mediated by symptom severity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.28.605508v1

Multiattribute Decision-making in Macaques Relies on Direct Attribute Comparisons Abstract. In value-based decisions, there are frequently multiple attributes, such as cost, quality, or quantity, that contribute to the overall goodness of an option. Because one option may not be be...

For anyone like me who enjoys geeking out over behavioral tasks, our new paper is out! Also important implications for mechanisms of value-based decisions

direct.mit.edu/jocn/article...

Mixed recurrent connectivity architecture in primate prefrontal cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.30.601443v1 The functional properties of a network depend on its connectivity, which includes the strength of it

Mixed recurrent connectivity architecture in primate prefrontal cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.30.601443v1

Anterior Cingulate Cortex Causally Supports Meta-Learning https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.12.598723v1 In dynamic environments with volatile rewards the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is believed to det

Anterior Cingulate Cortex Causally Supports Meta-Learning https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.12.598723v1

Synaptic alterations in pyramidal cells following genetic manipulation of neuronal excitability in monkey prefrontal cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.12.598658v1 In schizophrenia, layer 3 pyramidal neurons (L3PNs) in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) ar

Synaptic alterations in pyramidal cells following genetic manipulation of neuronal excitability in monkey prefrontal cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.12.598658v1

Identification of Recurrent Dynamics in Distributed Neural Populations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.27.596062v1 Large-scale recordings of neural activity over broad anatomical areas with high spatial and temporal

Identification of Recurrent Dynamics in Distributed Neural Populations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.27.596062v1

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

Postdoc position available! R01 funded, working on mechanisms of multi-attribute decision-making with myself and Antonio Rangel. Position is at Caltech in Rangel lab doing behavior modeling. For more information, contact me or Antonio. Please share with anyone who might be a good fit!