Shervin Safavi

📣 We are expanding! Repost 🙏🏽

- Postdoc (funded by @simonsfoundation.org grant on synchronisation between cognitive representations and stepping)
- Project Associates
- Create your role! (Reach out if you are keen on these topics and these roles do not define you 👀🤗)

www.neuroact.in

New preprint on how neural network architecture shapes function. Wide range of architectures, and family of tasks with components of navigation, decision making under uncertainty, multimodal integration and memory. Performance best explained by "computational traits" like sensitivity and memory.

My PhD journey has officially come to end with a Summa Cum Laude, thanks to all the amazing people who’ve supported me along the way, especially my advisors Anna Levina and @engeltatiana.bsky.social!
Which apparently coincided with graduation from a witchcraft and wizardry school 😉

#neuroskyence

Fantastic new work from our very own @alegrecortes.bsky.social !

Stay tuned for even more cool stuff!

In our Learning Club @cmc-lab.bsky.social today in ~2h (July 31st, Thursday, 2 PM CET), Jonathan Kasdin will tell us about his recent @nature.com paper (www.nature.com/articles/s41...). If you'd like to attend, send an empty email to virtual-talk-link-request@cmclab.org to get the link!

We are hiring for our brand new psilocybin clinical trial. Please DM if you have questions!

1. Senior Research Fellow (Clinical Trial Lead)

careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo...

2. Senior Clinical Psychotherapist

careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo...

Stomach–brain coupling indexes a dimensional signature of mental health - Nature Mental Health Using a relatively large and diverse sample of mostly young adults, this study by Banellis, Rebollo and colleagues examines associations between regional stomach–brain coupling and mental health and i...

I’m elated to share our latest publication - out now in @natmentalhealth.nature.com! www.nature.com/articles/s44... - tour de force by @leahbanellis.bsky.social @brainandstomach.bsky.social and the rest of the VMP team!

Ok, reinforcement learning fans: RL is great, but what do we do when there's no obvious reward from the environment? What about perfecting a golf swing or a foxtrot or a musical performance? We may have an answer. A tale of 🐦 🎶 + 🧠. 🧵1/ #bioacoustics #prattle 💬 #neuroai #compneuro

The summer schools at Les Houches are a magnificent tradition. I was honored to lecture there in 2023, and my notes now are published as "Ambitions for theory in the physics of life." #physics #physicsoflife scipost.org/SciPostPhysL...

A dream coming true. Read this great thread by Ralph focusing on our study of New York Rats.

Look at those cute NYC rats running around :D

@cbehav.bsky.social

Description Please note that job descriptions are not exhaustive, and you may be asked to take on additional duties that align with the key responsibilities ment...

Hiring a post-doc at Imperial in EEE. Broad in scope + flexible on topics: neural networks & new AI accelerators from a HW/SW co-design perspective!

w/ @neuralreckoning.bsky.social @achterbrain.bsky.social in Intelligent Systems and Networks group.

Plz share! 🚀: www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-...

🚀 New Open-Source Release! PyTorchTNN 🚀
A PyTorch library for biologically-inspired temporal neural nets: unrolling computation through time. Integrates with our recent Encoder-Attender-Decoder, which flexibly combines models (Transformer, SSM, RNN) since no single one fits all sequence tasks.
🧵👇

We are hiring for several research positions for this grant, starting early next year. Please reach out if you're interested!
More details on the jobs here: devcompsy.org/wp-content/u...

SCMs often assume overly-dense causal graphs in dynamic settings 👉⚽🥎, since any object interaction is a potential causal edge, making them hard to scale. In joint work with @turanorujlu.bsky.social @cgumbsch.bsky.social & Martin Butz we propose a new Causal Process Model to tackle this.
Thread👇

Send us an application if you're interest in a postdoc with us to work on the human neuroscience of brain body interactions and motivated behavior in psychiatric disorders!

The neural basis of species-specific defensive behaviour in Peromyscus mice - Nature Visual threat triggers contrasting freeze and escape defensive responses in two species of deer mice as a result of different activation thresholds downstream of the superior colliculus in the do...

Finally it's out! www.nature.com/articles/s41... How flexible are essential innate behaviours and their underlying neural circuits? @felixbaier.bsky.social & I, with Hopi Hoekstra and @farrowlab.bsky.social, addressed this by studying the #evolution of threat avoidance in Peromyscus mice.

JOB ALERT: Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Postdoc position in Osaka, Japan! Possible start in October 2025 (contact me ASAP), or from April 2026. PLEASE REPOST! #postdocjobs #neuroskyence #neuroscience #psychscisky #compneurosky #neurojobs 1/

Introduction to Neuroscience - YouTube This playlist is a series of videos introducing the biological principles of neuroscience, emphasizing neuroscience as a living field and connections to heal...

I loved @bingbrunton.bsky.social lecture series and I think they’re quite accessible to a broad audience: youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Please repost! We're hiring a postdoc to work with me and
@salagapan.bsky.social on an exciting interdisciplinary project in human neuroscience and brain-body interactions underlying effortful behavior in health and mood disorders.

siplab.gatech.edu/postdoc_ad_2...

What an awesome #CPConf2025! If you're interested in funded PhD or PostDoc opportunities (remote possible) do reach out (Paul.sharp@biu.ac.il).

we have exciting new paradigms modelling planning, meta- control, offline learning, and their relation to psychopathology.

See: Sharplabbiu.github.io

🚨 Neuro postdocs & grad students: Have a story to tell? Want to practice a talk before a conference or interview? Join our new seminar series on the Isthmus! All are welcome (from around the 🌎). Submit by Aug 20. Share your story (and this ad)!
(Ping me for Qs)
forms.gle/zpSTGWczxjqJ...

Jobs We are working to solve the biggest mysteries in bioscience.

We have an open position for a Scientist I at the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics. Come join our exciting research environment @alleninstitute.org. Please share!

alleninstitute.org/careers/jobs...

That’s a great point, there are at least some evidence in ANNs that critical dynamics coincide with the optimal point for efficient coding, for example this paper from @neuroprinciplist.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

In our Learning Club @cmc-lab.bsky.social tomorrow (= July 3rd, Thursday, 2 PM CET), @alexandertesmer.bsky.social will tell us about his recent paper (bsky.app/profile/alex...). If you'd like to attend, send an empty email to virtual-talk-link-request@cmclab.org to get the link!

Model mimicry limits conclusions about neural tuning and can mistakenly imply unlikely priors Nature Communications - Model mimicry limits conclusions about neural tuning and can mistakenly imply unlikely priors

Who doesn't like a good model of the brain? Yet, from simple regression to neural nets, some limitations keep popping up (e.g., overfitting) @mjwolff.bsky.social & I saw some cool but puzzling data, ran a quick analysis & found one such limitation: model mimicry. Now in #naturecommunications &🧵below

In our Learning Club @cmc-lab.bsky.social tomorrow (= June 26th, Thursday, 2 PM CET), David Clark will tell us about his recent @pnas.org paper (www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...). If you'd like to attend, send an empty email to virtual-talk-link-request@cmclab.org to get the link!

And here is the summary bsky.app/profile/davi... by our speaker, @david-g-clark.bsky.social

Structure of activity in multiregion recurrent neural networks | PNAS Neural circuits comprise multiple interconnected regions, each with complex dynamics. The interplay between local and global activity is thought to...

(1/23) In addition to the new Lady Gaga album "Mayhem," my paper with Manuel Beiran, "Structure of activity in multiregion recurrent neural networks," has been published today.

PNAS link: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

(see dclark.io for PDF)

An explainer thread...

New paper out! We show that individual dopaminergic neurons in Drosophila larvae can drive both learning and movement — two key dopamine functions. Advanced usage of Random Forest for multivariate data analysis. 🧠🪰 #Neuroscience#MachineLearning ##Dopamine#Drosophila
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Dopamine encodes deep network teaching signals for individual learning trajectories Longitudinal tracking of long-term learning behavior and striatal dopamine reveals that dopamine teaching signals shape individually diverse yet systematic learning trajectories, captured mathematical...

Does the brain learn by gradient descent?

It's a pleasure to share our paper at @cp-cell.bsky.social, showing how mice learning over long timescales display key hallmarks of gradient descent (GD).

The culmination of my PhD supervised by @laklab.bsky.social, @saxelab.bsky.social and Rafal Bogacz!