Paul Masset

We're thrilled to share that the Call for Workshops for this year's @rl-conference.bsky.social is now live!

As Workshop co-chair (alongside the wonderful Raksha Kumaraswamy and @claireve.bsky.social) we are looking forward to seeing the proposals for workshops that we receive.

LINK IN NEXT POST

New paper alert! 🚨

We found that the brain's compass is remarkably stable at two scales

1️⃣ the system maintains its internal organization for weeks
2️⃣ It "remembers" its orientation for weeks, even after a single visit

This may be key to how the brain aligns its other maps.

Paper: rdcu.be/e3waP

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

Postdoc position in Paris: come help develop new generation human brain computer interfaces ⚡🧠💻

Interested? Contact me if you have experience with machine learning (e.g. simulation-based inference, RL, generative/diffusion models) or dynamical systems.

See below for + details and retweet 🙏

1/
📢 Come study cognitive science in Paris!
The Master’s program in Cognitive Science at @ENS_ULM, @psl_univ, and @EHESS_fr is now accepting applications for the next academic year.

🗓 Deadline: February 24, 2026
💻 Apply here: master-cognitive-science.ens.psl.eu/en/applicati...

Preprints of pandemic potential - new historical piece from me on the history of bioRxiv/medRxiv, their role in the pandemic, and the way forward. 1/n journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

12 out of 10 stars. would recommend

I’m very happy to share the latest from my lab published in @Nature

Hippocampal neurons that initially encode reward shift their tuning over the course of days to precede or predict reward.

Full text here:
rdcu.be/eY5nh

With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world:
gershmanlab.com/textbook.html
It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class.

My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.

Emergent temporal abstractions in autoregressive models enable hierarchical reinforcement learning Large-scale autoregressive models pretrained on next-token prediction and finetuned with reinforcement learning (RL) have achieved unprecedented success on many problem domains. During RL, these model...

When we learn complex tasks, we chunk them into sub-tasks that our brains orchestrate into action sequences. How we do this is not entirely understood. This work explores how to learn and internally control temporally abstracted sub-tasks in RL/AI with sequence models. arxiv.org/abs/2512.20605

🧠 New year, new preprint!

Why does motor learning involve multiple brain regions? We propose that the cortico-cerebellar system learns a "map" of actions where similar movements are nearby, while basal ganglia do RL in this simplified space.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How heterogeneity shapes dynamics and computation in the brain No two neurons are the same, yet models often treat neural populations as pools of identical and interchangeable elements. Here, Dahmen et al. highlight recent theoretical advances that reveal the imp...

At the Bernstein Conference 2024, Jeremie Lefebvre and I organized a workshop on the computational consequences of neural heterogeneity. Now, slightly more than a year later, we funneled the emerging discussions into a perspective piece: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

The RLC call for papers is out! A last minute bit of excitement before the holidays. Come join us at the conference every RL researcher complains about missing

McGill’s Arts Building on campus, featuring its stone façade and green dome, with the McGill flag raised and autumn foliage surrounding the building.

McGill is recruiting top-tier researchers working abroad through the federally funded Canada Impact+ Research Chairs program, addressing global and national challenges. The first round is due in early 2026.

Learn more and submit your candidacy: https://mcgill.ca/x/5Zh

Canada-Impact-Plus - Research - Western University

If you're (1) into nhp neurophysiology and/or biological motor control, (2) a foreign big shot and (3) interested in moving here, please reach out -- this new program looks extremely attractive (min. $8M over 8y)! www.uwo.ca/research/can...

Montreal AI & Neuroscience 2025 started this morning! 🧠X🤖

www.main2025.org

#MAIN2025
#NeuroAI
#Neuroscience
#AI

📣We have 2 open faculty positions for senior researchers in Neuroscience at Queen's University!

healthsci.queensu.ca/administrati...

1. a new Director for our Centre for Neuroscience Studies
2. a non-human primate NeuroAI researcher

Please share widely and reach out for questions!

Environmental representations in mouse hippocampal CA1 reflect the predictive structure of navigation Predictive theories of cognitive mapping propose that these representations encode the predictive relationships among contents as experienced by the n…

Another new paper from the lab: Predictive theories like the SR imply that navigators who navigate differently should have cognitive maps which differ in predictable ways. Here we show that this holds in mouse hippocampal CA1.

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

Image of robots struggling with a social dilemma.

1/ Why does RL struggle with social dilemmas? How can we ensure that AI learns to cooperate rather than compete?

Introducing our new framework: MUPI (Embedded Universal Predictive Intelligence) which provides a theoretical basis for new cooperative solutions in RL.

Preprint🧵👇

(Paper link below.)

Jobs | Psychological & Brain Sciences Tenured/Tenure-track position in Cognitive Psychology Open Date Dec 01, 2025 Salary Range or Pay Grade The expected academic base salary range for this position is $110,000- $144,500 (Assistant Profes...

Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins is inviting applications for 3 open-rank tenured/tenure-track positions in (1) Behavioral Neuroscience, (2) Cognitive Neuroscience, and (3) Cognitive Psychology.

pbs.jhu.edu/about/jobs/

These are is a great reviews (primarily for striatal projecting DA neurons): doi.org/10.1016/B978...
doi.org/10.1016/B978...

McGill also has two great PhD rotation programs (similar to many US schools):
- IPN rotation program: www.mcgill.ca/ipn/programs...
-Quantitative Life Sciences (QLS) rotation program: www.mcgill.ca/qls/

Students are encouraged to apply via both the Psychology program: www.mcgill.ca/psychology/g... and the Integrated Program in Neuroscience: www.mcgill.ca/ipn/prospect... IPN applications are reviewed on a rolling basis but applying by the Dec 1st deadline to both programs is strongly preferred.

Experimental approaches would involve refining and developing complex cognitive tasks in rats, chronic multi-site Neuropixel recordings, and advanced computational methods. McGill has a great neuroscience scene and Montréal is an amazing place to work at the intersection of neuroscience and AI

I am recruiting graduate students for the experimental side of my lab @mcgill.ca for admission in Fall 2026!
Get in touch if you're interested in how brain circuits implement distributed computation, including dopamine-based distributed RL and probabilistic representations.

CAN meeting postcard

Share your research at the next Canadian Neuroscience Meeting May 18-21, 2026 in Montreal!
Calls for Parallel Symposia, Satellite Meetings, Poster Abstract and Travel & Professional Awards are now open - Don't miss these opportunities!
can-acn.org/meeting-2026/

Subsecond dopamine fluctuations do not specify the vigor of ongoing actions Nature Neuroscience - Liu and colleagues show that the vigor (that is, speed and amplitude) of dexterous movements is not controlled by ongoing fluctuations in extracellular dopamine within the...

Delighted to see this finally out: rdcu.be/eO9oW
We tested whether brief striatal dopamine release events influence the vigor of skilled movements. Despite popular belief, we did not find any evidence linking rapid dopamine dynamics to motor vigor on a moment-by-moment basis.

2025 UCL Neuropixels Course - YouTube Lectures at the 2025 UCL Neuropixels course (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/neuropixels/training/2025-neuropixels-course)

All talks of the 2025 UCL #Neuropixels course are now available: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

For more information on the course see the website: www.ucl.ac.uk/neuropixels/...

And for those at #SfN, come say hi at the #Neuropixels booth (Number 3731) or at my Poster 👋.

Happy Neuropixeling!

How do VTA DA neurons sculpt downstream representations to reinforce actions? VERY excited about our new preprint (by Alex Pan Vazquez & @czimmerman.bsky.social )

More detailed thread by @chenjiang01.bsky.social here (once Bluesky removes the spam label...)
bsky.app/profile/chen...