iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Jakob Voigts @jvoigts.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

How do 🐁deal with complex landscapes? Turns out they learn a lot very quickly. We think they do this by learning a set of repeated sparse paths, which form a type of compressed world model. Joint work with the Hermundstad lab, led by Tzuhsuan Ma and Alison Comrie: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Eric Denovellis @eric-denovellis.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I wanted to highlight the work of Alison Comrie et al. that recently came out in Neuron and I don’t think it is getting enough attention: paper: cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(26)00674-4 #neuroskyence

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Highlighting a couple of lovely behavior-focused preprints from some of the newer rodent neuro labs at Janelia: mice hunting crickets in the @emilyjanedennis.bsky.social lab (tinyurl.com/5fenwwh8) and exploring structured, complex environments in the @jvoigts.bsky.social lab (tinyurl.com/4ewsvvhw)

biorxiv.org

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It's like you're in my brain, Balatro and all

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Then again, maybe it’s not too different to awarding a Nobel for discovery of place cells (which are obviously a topic of continued debate). Seems like maybe the key is distinguishing between claims of observation vs. function.

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Awarding Nobels for conceptual advances does seem potentially more contentious…Although perhaps justifiable here if based just on impact rather than ‘correctness’.

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Shervin Safavi @neuroprinciplist.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

We are thrilled 🥳 to share that we’re joining forces with @roxana-zeraati.bsky.social to establish a joint research unit, @cmc-unit.bsky.social integrating embodied and natural decision making across species! We also have open PhD and postdoc positions (check below for more info) 🎉

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Thanks Dennis! Hope you’re well :)

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Grateful to have been selected as an Allen Institute Next Generation Leader - and for the opportunity to learn from and engage with this wonderful community!

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Lauren Burgeno @laurenburgeno.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

🚨 New Walton × Bogacz Collab Preprint! POV: dopamine refuses to have just one job.🧠 DLS dopamine carries distinct reward AND action prediction errors — parallel teaching signals that could support value learning and habit formation. Enjoyed working with Yuhao, Juan Carlos, et al. on this one!

doi.org

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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Dopamine dips during unrewarded actions promote punishment-resistant reward seeking www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Don’t want to distract from Drew’s take home message here: that often psychology’s endeavour to become more rigorous is underappreciated (by neuroscientists), which I very much agree with!

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Also: a good understanding of statistical models often results in a better understanding of the structure of the data. Similar to having to articulate quantitative models more broadly when attempting to understand one process, usually results in higher precision, better follow up experiments etc

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

And yet there are plenty of neurophysiology papers out there that eg exalt in their low p values thanks to treating every neuron as an individual subject. Just saying - when stats is done neuroscientists often aren’t great at it ;) Agreed the utility/necessity of stats per se is another question…

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

They’re also way better at stats…!

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Ecological Visual Processing in the Mouse - with @michaelgoard.bsky.social @crisniell.bsky.social @mbeyeler.bsky.social Visual computations that are engaged in ecological contexts: active sensing, motion processing, scene analysis, distance estimation, and spatial perception. doi.org/10.1146/annu...

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

#fens2026 has revealed to me a real diversity in how neuroscientists use travelators.

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Open Neuroscience @open-neuroscience.com · 07/07/2026

📜 Project Showcase 🛠️ pyControl: Open source, Python-based, behavioural experiment control. 👩‍💻 🧑‍💻 Developed by Thomas Akam 👀 To learn more about it: open-neuroscience.com/en/post/pyco... #OpenSoftware #OpenScience #OpenSource

pyControl is a system of open source hardware
and software for controlling behavioural
experiments in neuroscience and psychology,
built around the MicroPython microcontroller.

pyControl is a user-friendly and flexible tool
addressing a commonly encountered use case
in behavioural neuroscience:
(1) Defining behavioural tasks as extended state machines.
(2) Running them efficiently as high-throughput experiments.
(3) Communicating task logic to other researchers

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Super cool study, love it when people ask these sorts of questions. Very naive q on my part though: the reduction in energy cost after learning isn’t anything to do with behavior also getting less complex? (Or maybe that’s the point?)

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

I’m kind of out of my element with Barrels (looking forward to learning a lot about cortex! ;) ) so I’m not 100% sure. But my understanding is that they’ve attached it to FENS this year instead of SfN, I think?

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Looking forward to speaking at Barrels Meeting this Saturday, and a poster this Tuesday afternoon at #FENS2026 - PS02-07PM-083. Presenting mostly published work but sneaking in some new CA1 data/analyses that I’m excited about and keen to discuss…!

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David Robbe @davidrobbe.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Excited to share our new paper: "The Tower Foraging Park: A paradigm for studying cognitive and motor processes underlying behavioral flexibility in freely moving mice,". Out now in @cp-iscience.bsky.social 🧵1/9 www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

cell.com

The Tower Foraging Park: A paradigm for studying cognitive and motor processes underlying behavioral flexibility in freely moving mice

Biological sciences; Behavioral neuroscience; Laboratory animal science

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Really enjoyed reading this, I find the idea very interesting - and totally agreed it would bring people together, which is important! Deciding on what the benchmarks should be seems crucial and a bit tricky, though. But again, likely better than the alternative (nothing) which we have now…

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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

This paper is an absolutely beautiful combination of a deep set of cognitive ideas, a super creative task, a surprisingly impressive behaviour, and an elegant modelling framework. One of my favourite things in the last year.

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Michael Totty @mictott.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

And here's another for all the ventral striatum / olfactory tubercle folks. It's hard not to love the Calleja and interface islands.

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peterdoohan.bsky.social @peterdoohan.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

How do brains plan actions towards goals? To get at this question we studied mice navigating complex mazes as goals changed on every trial 🧵 Work with @thomasakam.bsky.social @behrenstimb.bsky.social @kristorpjensen.bsky.social now on BioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

this), especially in a more continuous action space. The modelling in my recent paper might be more ‘familiar’ in the sense of action selection that you speak of. But again, I think you’re totally right here that there are different conventions at work and it’s interesting to ask why

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Sorry for being slow to respond - but in short, totally agree that part of this comes down to species-differences in how we typically model these processes (which I find quite fascinating!) Exactly how to model the policy has also been an interest in the lab (some previous work might speak to

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Raymond Chua @raymondrchua.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Excited to share our new paper accepted at ICML 2026 with @tyrellturing.bsky.social and Doina Precup! 🇰🇷 See you in Seoul. A major challenge in continual reinforcement learning is balancing: • plasticity (learning new things) • stability (not forgetting old ones) 🧵 1/15

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

do predict sensitivity to reward size and some don’t.

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

supposed to all do the same thing but eg can’t fit each other’s data. In the paper specifically they state that RPE RL models are equivocal about effects of reward size (also discussed at length in the supp) and I think that’s fair considering exactly what you’ve pointed out - some RL models

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

account for such effects (and indeed this is an approach others have taken - extend/alter the classical formulation until it fits the data, and typically thus current dogma). I think one has to question what one learns from an exercise that results in a ‘family’ of models that are apparently

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

out - some RL models do predict sensitivity to reward size and some don’t.

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

models that are apparently supposed to all do the same thing but eg can’t fit each other’s data. In the paper specifically they state that RPE RL models are equivocal about effects of reward size (also discussed at length in the supp) and I think that’s fair considering exactly what you’ve pointed

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

The ‘flexibility’ with which we (in the field) specify our RL models is something often discussed in our lab. Hard to get into detail here but, briefly, vanilla TDRL doesn’t predict a change in the efficiency of learning with reward size. One can imagine ways to alter the classical formulation to

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Yes, indeed - this is pointed out in the intro, there are some nice classical psychology studies on this. But typically ignored by neuroscientists, not accounted for in (many) RL models, and not understood mechanistically until now

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Miguel Nunez @nunezkant.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

1/ 🚨🚨Preprint alert! "Perfect" isn't always smart 🧠. Anyone can tell apart two stimuli (including our mice). But how do we extract rules that apply to new stimuli? 🧵 biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @marius10p.bsky.social @computingnature.bsky.social #neuroAI #neuroscience #AI

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

Friends don’t let friends say knack I prefer the more refined, sophisticated “the accumbens” personally

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Brad Hulse @bradkhulse.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Story time friends... Ring attractor networks rely on fine-tuned symmetric connectivity. The fly head direction network has ring attractor dynamics but heterogeneous connectivity. How is this possible? 1/🧵 Link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Ling-Qi Zhang @lingqiz.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

It’s very fun to analyze other people’s data for your favorite model and theory, but data reuse actually takes a huge amount of effort. We tested if current agentic AI can help with data reuse. Conclusion: it definitely can, but requires careful human supervision. #AIforScience #compneuro #neuroAI

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Paul Kristian LaFosse @lafosse.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

🚨 Ever wanted a simple way to control the activity of thousands of neurons? We introduce an all-optical raster photostimulation method to do just that! w/ @computingnature.bsky.social @marius10p.bsky.social #FluorescenceFriday #neuroskyence www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/n

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Laura Grima @lauragrima.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Oh no, I don’t have claim over any of this! If anything it’s our LLM overlords we should thank (or at least one helped me design my site a lot haha)

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