John Pearson

Neuroscience has a species problem If neuroscience is serious about building general principles of brain function, cross-species dialogue must become a core organizing principle.

The biggest problem holding neuroscience back right now isn’t data or tools, thanks in large part to the BRAIN Initiative.

It’s fragmentation across species. I wrote this to hopefully spark discussion around an issue that can only be solved as a community👇

www.thetransmitter.org/animal-model...

Holistic motor control of zebra finch song syllable sequences Nature - A cortical premotor network in HVC, once initiated, can sustain and regulate the sequential production of zebra finch song syllables without major extrinsic inputs.

check out the new paper from the lab published yesterday! rdcu.be/e1bBO

Hey Anhtropic!

I know the US Govt. probably pays you a lot. How about you divide up whatever that amount is, and tack it onto the rate you charge Claude Max accounts. Just pass it on to us, and tell the government to piss off.

I bet you'd actually end up *making money* on that deal.

Token Anxiety Nikunj Kothari C @nikunj • Feb 13 A friend left a party at 9:30 on a Saturday. Not tired. Not sick. He wanted to get back to his agents. Nobody questions it anymore. Half the room is thinking the same thing. The other half are probably checking the progress of their agents. At a party. All the parties are sober now. Young people don't drink because they're going back to work after. Not inspired by Bryan Johnson, although that's probably a factor. The buzz they want now runs on tokens per day.

I keep noticing it on walks through the Mission. Laptops glowing everywhere. Cafes, sidewalks, heck even park benches. People walking with screens open like a flashlight guiding them somewhere. Less drunk laughter on the streets these days. More keystrokes. Dinner conversations used to start with "what are you building?" That's over. Now it's "how many agents do you have running?" People drop the number the way they used to drop their follower count. Quietly competitive. The flex isn't what you've accomplished anymore. It's what's working while you're sitting here not working. The vocabulary is what really gets me though. People describe models the way sommeliers describe wine. This one has better taste. That one hallucinates with more confidence. Opus is bold, Codex is smooth. They talk about harnesses and reins like they're controlling horses. Invisible whips directing invisible labor. Someone at a dinner said they keep

labor. Someone at a dinner said they keep "Claude on a tight leash for code review but give it more slack for creative work." We've started borrowing the language of how we treat animals for something none of us actually understand yet. Waking up and checking what your agents produced overnight is the first thing now. Before coffee. Before texts. You open your laptop and grade homework you assigned in your sleep. Some of it is good. Most needs rework. But you start shipping a plan before you sleep just so you can wake up to more code written overnight. Saturdays became uninterrupted build windows. No meetings, no Slack, twelve hours of you and your agents. Sunday morning X is all terminal screenshots and shipping receipts. "What'd you ship this weekend?" replaced "what'd you do this weekend?"

The anxiety is rational, which is why it sticks. Every week some new benchmark drops that makes last month's workflow feel prehistoric. Codex ships overnight processing. Opus gets faster. Context windows double. None of it reduces the pressure. It multiplies it. You can do more now. And someone already is. The window to be first at anything feels like it's shrinking by the day. Literally, by the day. I replaced Netflix with Claude Code. I lie in bed thinking about what I can spin up before I fall asleep, what can run while I'm unconscious. Reading a novel feels indulgent now. Watching a movie without a laptop open feels wasteful. This voice in my head that says "something could be running right now" just doesn't shut off. I'm not even building a company. I'm just addicted to building my random ideas. Everyone here knows they should step away more. That's not the problem. The problem is what your brain does when you try. I still take a x ss walks. The agents come with me now.

Token Anxiety

i think i mostly echo this for myself. with so much that can be done, i often feel like i *should* be doing something, always

I’ve got so many things to say here, and not much time to say it

What I can say is, unlike dec -> early Jan, the last few weeks have been a period of quiet for me. I was talking before about how I had +700kloc then? It’s been zero the last few weeks.

Good luck. Also, I think my end-to-end encryption technology, Whisper, could add value to your product.

I've been inspired to become a founder of a new startup that develops brain-to-brain interface technology. It's called Talk. We're going to reinvent communication for the digital age.

The best part is that we're able to zero-shot transfer the full computational stack already used by your brain!

I am appalled by the lax safety measures employed by the Talk team in releasing their technology into the wild. That is why I will be taking several key members of Talk with me to start a new venture, Think Before, with greater controls that operate in the interest of all humanity.

Feedback control of random networks as a model of flexible motor cortical dynamics across tasks Kalidindi and Crevecoeur develop a computational framework linking feedback-controlled networks to limb dynamics. They demonstrate that optimal control of fixed network reproduces key motor cortical d...

Paper is out by @harikalidindi.bsky.social : feedback control model of neural population activity
www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Neural and computational mechanisms underlying one-shot perceptual learning in humans - Nature Communications In one-shot perceptual learning, what we see can be dramatically altered by a single past experience. Using psychophysics, fMRI, iEEG, and DNNs, the authors identify neural and computational mechanism...

Also no shade on the authors who’s science should have been communicated about better. Check out their paper! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Wow AI is so amazing we should use it for all our scientific diagrams

In the first systematic, multi-node recordings of spiking activity across the human basal ganglia–thalamic circuit, @dennislondon.bsky.social explains how this pathway integrates cognitive variables with ongoing action. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

The basal ganglia output is often framed as a motor gate: corticostriatal circuits select an action, then GPi/SNr-thalamus helps release it. In humans, we find this same pathway carries cognitive variables embedded in movement signals—and even produces learning-relevant signals after feedback. 1/10

Hey #ARO2026, today we have a poster on an interesting participant who hears sounds when her eyes move! Board #134 1/

Our paper is out in @natneuro.nature.com!

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

We develop a geometric theory of how neural populations support generalization across many tasks.

@zuckermanbrain.bsky.social
@flatironinstitute.org
@kempnerinstitute.bsky.social

1/14

The lesson for all the students out there is that science is a community project. Most of us make individually small contributions to this project. Success is measured at the collective level. Many of our professional (and personal) dysfunctions could be fixed by more fully embracing this view.

Konstanz School of Collective Behavior 2026 is one of a kind school where students delve into state of the art research on collective behavior.
Apply here: www.exc.uni-konstanz.de/kscb/applica...
Deadline: March 15th, 2026
@cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de

Reminder: CCN 2026 Proceedings abstracts are due today, Feb 9, Anywhere on Earth (AOE).

@jmgrohneuro.bsky.social

the NYU WILD Lab is hiring a new postdoc, to work on bird-window collision research and other wild animal welfare topics in the urban context. Feel free to contact me with questions. apply.interfolio.com/180942

We’re hiring! The Suthana Lab @ Duke is looking for a Research Assistant to join our team studying human memory & real-world 🧠 dynamics using wearable tech & intracranial recordings.

Apply: careers.duke.edu/job/Durham-C...

You can also email suthanalab@duke.edu with CV/questions. Please share!

Absolutely incredible opportunity for someone interested in cutting edge human neuroscience and neurotech.

I have news! After 4 fabulous years at Northeastern, this July I will be moving to Duke—with tenure! It’s hard to convey how grateful I am to everyone who has made this possible: from old professors in Mexico and mentors in the US to students, colleagues, and, of course, my amazing wife and family.

One day online conference on the ways behavioral and neural sciences can inform peace efforts. Organized by Duke's amazing @felipedebrigard.bsky.social Free! Tomorrow! (Fri Feb 6). To register see link below.

behavioralscientist.org/program-neur...

Bibliography cleanup is known to be harder than AGI. Same with successfully connecting a laptop with a projector. It's what we humans will be doing long after the robot takeover. 😇

This is who runs this account

Neuro’s ark: Understanding fast foraging with star-nosed moles “MacArthur genius” Kenneth Catania outlined the physiology behind the moles’ stellar foraging skills two decades ago. Next, he wants to better characterize their food-seeking behavior.

Kenneth Catania spoke with @thetransmitter.bsky.social about how the specialized snout of the star-nosed mole allows for high-speed foraging and underscores the importance of studying behavior alongside anatomy.

By Lauren Schneider

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/neuros-ark/n...

BG GRC Oath: I acknowledge that the go/no-go model of the BG was useful but it is outdated and incorrect, or at least incomplete. I pledge not to use the go/no-go model as a strawman to motivate my work.

Taking the #GRCBasalGanglia Oath ✋🏼

I acknowledge that the go/no-go model of the BG was useful but it is outdated and incorrect, or at least incomplete. I pledge not to use the go/no-go model as a strawman to motivate my work.

Why don’t neural networks learn all at once, but instead progress from simple to complex solutions? And what does “simple” even mean across different neural network architectures?

Sharing our new paper @iclr_conf led by Yedi Zhang with Peter Latham

arxiv.org/abs/2512.20607