iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Even if there's a push in this direction, I'm pretty sure that some safe harbors should remain in science for those who want to do it their way. As long as you're interested in discoveries, there are gonna be people interested in keeping you in science

Anna Gruzdeva @annagru.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Reposted by Alex Efremov

Happy to share our preprint! We show that hypothalamic hunger-promoting AgRP neurons reflect proximity to food across different mazes in hungry mice. After mice discover food, AgRP activity decreases as they approach the food and increases as they move away.

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Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

What is the worst case scenario that you imagine?

Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Btw, I believe that fundamental theory would come from the evo-devo side, so please don't get discouraged!

Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Don't get me wrong, I love theoretical neuro, and intend to keep doing it, but we have to figure out something fundamental to win people's attention. 2/2

Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Isn't the answer in the OP? We're pre-paradigmatic and pre-paradigmatic theories are mostly wrong. I think, experimentalists are correct in not being too mesmerized with our theories, as these theories are wild guesses. 1/2

Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I can't even trust my own consciousness to understand me perfectly 😭

Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

I think, any study of control in the broad sense (from behavioral through political to technological) is a two-sided coin. People who value freedom would find it useful as a means to understand how to undermine oppression, while people who value power would love it for other obvious reasons.

Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Reposted by Alex Efremov

Sanders' proposal for the government to take a 50% stake in AI companies is, IMO, a good idea. AI will be a critical piece of infrastructure, one which should be built with appropriate safe-guards and environmental planning. Trying to cancel AI is foolish - but leaving it to market forces is too.

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Zejin Lu @zejinlu.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Now out in Nature Machine Intelligence @NatMachIntell “Adopting a human developmental visual diet yields robust and shape-based AI vision”: doi.org/10.1038/s422.... A wonderful case where brain inspiration improved AI. With @martisamuser.bsky.social, Radek Cichy and @timkietzmann.bsky.social .

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Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

What would be the point of stopping them if you're doing the same thing?

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Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

I want to see more evo-devo in brain-inspired AI

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Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Could it be that the cerebellum is a perfect area to study the duality of prediction and control?

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But if going deeper means finding a connection to other theories describing that or other processes, it's hardcore theory-making, and deserves ultimate respect 🫡 2/2

I guess, what I mean is that if it's a deeper refinement of a theory that's focused on some particular process, personally, I'd like to see evidence that this theory is really good in describing that process before making that bet. 1/

Oh, definitely there are theories for theoreticians. I think, what distinguishes them is the scope - they are not about some specific idea/phenomenon, but a generalization of many ideas/phenomena that share some principles.

I think the point of the theory-experiment loop is that we don't really know which ideas are worth developing in detail unless we try to root ourselves in experiments. The ideas can be abundant, but most of them would be just ideas

Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Pride and superiority over reviewer 2 who could not see the obvious link between your past and current works OR Sadness from being old and not at your peak form anymore (which you were at when writing that previous paper)

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Reposted by Alex Efremov

Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

After several years of work, my lab is starting to put out our first papers on learning in a unicellular organism (Stentor coeruleus). Here we show evidence for a form of associative learning in Stentor: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

What are these services? Networking?

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Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Maybe "drawing parallels" was not the best wording, I didn't mean it as in "equate". I rather mean that we want to find what constraints are shared between nervous systems of different species, as well as what are the differences allowed within these constraints.

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Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution". I come to think that we'd be very lucky if we manage to draw clear parallels between, let's say, the human brain and the mouse brain, without trying to follow their evolutionary history back to origins.

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Reposted by Alex Efremov

Shahab Bakhtiari @shahabbakht.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

I don’t think AI’s success in coding will automatically translate to other fields. That level of performance only works where the output is as easily verifiable as code; and not many domains fit that bill. 2/2

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Reposted by Alex Efremov

Adrien Peyrache @apeyrache.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

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

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Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

To rule out the relationship between cytoarchitecture and function, one needs to be sure they are trying to map correct functions. What makes people confident about it?

Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

For one, they can help in shaping out what "brain-like" is

Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

You can still find some link between some processes that nobody linked before. It probably won't be as fundamental as GR but being fundamental ≠ being important.

Ben Hayden @benhayden.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

Reposted by Alex Efremov

On a deeper level: the purpose of arealization is (or should be) be to help understand function; so function has no place on the list of area criteria. If the other criteria disagree with function, that just makes them a poor guide to arealization.

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Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

The other side of the coin is that if the knob is used but doesn't serve any purpose, the usage has to stop for homeostatic reasons (and sometimes even the knob itself disassembled). So I guess, if it wasn't your intervention that turned the knob, assume that it serves a purpose.

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Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

And of course, not all the tracks will be on a new platform (I think I've lost about 1%). But also some of the tracks that I liked before they disappeared from Spotify are restored in the new playlists.

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Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

I used TuneMyMusic for that, had to pay a few bucks to transfer my ~10k songs distributed over ~50 playlists. So far I have caught just a few alien tracks in the new playlists

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Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

Now I'm curious what are the others

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Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

But the lack of respect for science can't be reduced to the uncertainty with which the findings are communicated. I would argue that one of the causes is the opposite - people too often see clickbait titles "Scientists discovered X!!!", dig deeper, get disillusioned, and figure that it's all a con

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Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

The latter, you just wait for the next debate over how to think about the brain

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Alex Efremov @audiodrome.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

It seems to me that being vulnerable to anti-science propaganda too often goes hand in hand with not being into sci-fi literature