Nico Schuck

Seconded!

mhh, interesting, I wasn’t aware of the scale effect on CI and curious now to read up on it. if you wrote a blog post about it I’d definitely read it! I am still wondering why then humans have such bad episodic memory, at least in terms of details/precision. Most of it is gist, rather than pixels.

New preprint out 🎉

What happens to the hippocampal “place code” when an animal is actively engaged in a task?

The answer surprised us (and might surprise you too!).

Let's dive in ⬇️

Link:
"Hippocampal trace coding dominates and disrupts place coding" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The cost might not be there during learning, but isn’t there one for protecting memorized items from forgetting when learning new events?
Humans indeed appear to do both, but perhaps bc they have (semi) separate systems and staged learning processes which makes it easier. And still forget at lot.

Thank you for writing this Andrew! Makes me wonder whether the balance between memorization and generalisation can be learned by the model, or if there‘s rather a constant „leverage threshold“ beyond which memorization sets in?

Super useful and interesting read on generalization, memory and overfitting, highly recommended!

True, it'd probably be better if names would be inserted between the author names on random papers. I think some hyperprolific authors do that

By Nico Schuck, Nico Schuck, Nico Schuck, Nico Schuck and Nicolas W Schuck

A simple method to mitigate catastrophic forgetting of academic author names

Publicly wondering if your product might be conscious is good hype @anthropic.com, but poor science.
Consciousness attribution should integrate prior expectations with public/shareable facts, not by computational equivalence alone or anecdotes. If that makes us "vulgar behaviorists", we are proud.

You can't... repeal... a scientific finding. At that point it's just called lying about it.

If you work at the intersection of computational neuroscience and machine learning, consider applying for this postdoc position (January 2027 start date):
academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15868
An opportunity to work with a great group of people across Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley.

The massive surge in #MSCA applications (+60% over last year) is great, but combined with slightly lower funding it has led to a real bloodbath this funding cycle. Hope all the incredibly talented postdocs who didn't get funded this time stay strong.

Google Scholar should have a first and last author filter for profiles so I can stop playing detective looking for that paper from XXX et al.

How the brain's 'memory replay' goes wrong in Alzheimer's disease Memory dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease may be linked to impairment in how the brain replays our recent experiences while we are resting, according to a new study in mice by UCL scientists.

How the brain's 'memory replay' goes wrong in Alzheimer's disease
@ucl press release on @caswell.bsky.social lab new study:

www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2026/ja...

𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗺𝗮-𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗳 𝗮𝗯𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲
Giovanni Pezzulo et al introduce hierarchical model of goal attainment in PFC.
Looks very impressive.
#neuroskyence
arxiv.org/abs/2601.189...

Check out the latest from Sam HallMcMaster on the role of entorhinal cortex in factorizing representations and generalization

CCN is wonderful, highly recommended!

🚨 #CCN2026 Proceedings submissions are open!
CCN 2026 again features an 8-page Proceedings track (alongside extended abstracts). Accepted papers will appear in CCN-Proceedings (CCN‑P) with DOIs on OpenReview.

‪Voxelwise Encoding Models (VEMs) are a great framework for modeling fMRI data, but it can be difficult to implement. We've made VEM accessible by providing software, tutorials and reviews that guide its use an implementation. Get it here:
gallantlab.org/blog/2025-12...
#neuroscience, #neuroimaging

Writing is thinking

Outsourcing the entire task of writing to LLMs will deprive us of the essential creative task of interpreting our findings and generating a deeper theoretical understanding of the world.

How do we achieve few-shot generalization? New work led by @fabianrenz.bsky.social dives into the role of replay in learning and using structure to generalize reward. Dream team effort with Shany Grossman @nathanieldaw.bsky.social Peter Dayan & @doellerlab.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Thanks for including me in this nice collaboration!

We are excited to announce that the Cognitive Computational Neuroscience meeting (CCN 2026) will be held at New York University from August 3–6, 2026.
2026.ccneuro.org

The explore-exploit trade-off in sports and exercise: a primer on empirical and computational approaches Sports and exercise require constant on-the-fly decision-making from professional athletes and recreational exercisers alike. In the final minutes of …

Very happy to see this out now in Psychology of Sport & Exercise 🤓

If you’re interested in how the explore–exploit framework helps us study decision-making in sports and exercise, check it out!

w/ @nicoschuck.bsky.social & @wanjawolff.bsky.social

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

The University of Hamburg Still Germany’s Most Sustainable University

👏 Congratulations to @uni-hamburg.de for being rated Germanys most sustainable university. Glad to see that UHH has been committed to lead by example in this important area over the past years.

www.uni-hamburg.de/en/newsroom/...

One week left to apply to the Max Planck School of Cognition! I have worked with several grad students from the programme and it's an impressive group of people. Deadline Dec 1st.

🚀 We are hiring! 🚀

🔍 Join us as a Postdoctoral Researcher (fully-funded) at the Helmholtz Institute for Human-Centered AI in Munich.

indeed! it was great to be there, thank you for organizing it!

Registration is open. Please spread the word. The preliminary schedule will be up on the site later this month, and we've got an amazing line up!