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Tim Behrens

@behrenstimb.bsky.social
4.2K followers 248 following 509 posts

Slowly becoming a neuroscientist. EiC @elife.bsky.social

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Reposted by Tim Behrens
ISMRM @ismrm.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
We’re excited to introduce Karla Miller, Ph.D., the 2027 Lauterbur Lecturer! Join us in Vancouver for the 2027 ISMRM & ISMRT Annual Meeting & Exhibition. LEARN MORE: ow.ly/JzSi50ZMNaX #ISMRM2027 #ISMRM #ISMRT #MRI #MagneticResonance #Radiology #MedicalImaging #MRTechnologists #Radiographer
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
This made a social media buzz earlier this year, including an eLife paper. I am now pointing to the eLife correction. The authors used the correct antibody,but referred to the wrong one in the paper. They supplied the original receipts during the correction. elifesciences.org/articles/112...
elifesciences.org
Correction: p16 deficiency attenuates intervertebral disc degeneration by adjusting oxidative stress and nucleus pulposus cell cycle
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Erin J. Wamsley 🧠📈😴 @wamsleylab.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Oh. my. god. The biggest scientific publishers are collecting nearly $4 BILLION A YEAR in author fees. This is absurd. We've got to break free of this system. If everyone would just agree to it, we could just post all our new papers on bsky and it wouldn't cost anything. Or something. But not this.
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I just posted a few of the awesome recent things we have published in @elife.bsky.social. You can browse them all here elifesciences.org/browse. You can filter whether you just want to see the ones the reviewers raved about, or whether you want to ignore the reviewers and judge for yourselves.
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
If I were reviewing it, it would have got a "Landmark" :)
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Such beautiful experimental logic to test some of the most important ideas about basic cortical processing.
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
This is a really really beautiful thing. One of my favourite papers of the year. elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
elifesciences.org/articles/109...
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
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Reposted by Tim Behrens
Eric Schares @eschares.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
🚨Update: Our analysis of global APC expenditure has now been expanded to cover more publishers (7 -> 14) and more years (2019-2025). We estimate $15B in APCs paid over seven years, $3.7B in 2025 alone. Elsevier crosses the $1B threshold by itself in 2025. arxiv.org/abs/2608.16322 #ScholComm
Line chart showing 5 biggest publishers from 2019-2025
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Neuroskeptic @neuroskeptic.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Reverse engineering neural circuits - @wiringthebrain.bsky.social talks to @behrenstimb.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/computationa...
thetransmitter.org
Success stories from computational neuroscience
Kevin Mitchell talks with Timothy Behrens about ring attractors, the role of innate structure, and an expanded view of cognitive maps.
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Laura Driscoll @lndriscoll.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Confused about all this talk of compositionality in neuroscience? Read our new perspective www.nature.com/articles/s41... with authors Reidar Riveland and Alex Pouget.
nature.com
The compositionality continuum as a principle for studying the neural basis of intelligence - Nature Neuroscience
Compositionality exists on a continuum of increasing complexity rather than as a binary trait. Studying its implementation in simpler biological and artificial systems is the most tractable path towar...
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
My favourite paper of 2026.
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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social talks to Timothy Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social about which neural systems the field has genuinely cracked. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/computationa...
thetransmitter.org
Success stories from computational neuroscience
Kevin Mitchell talks with Timothy Behrens about ring attractors, the role of innate structure, and an expanded view of cognitive maps.
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
This was a fun chat about getting to mechanisms in cognition…
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
An absolutely beautiful thing.
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Have @ukri.org published the reasoning behind this decision? It seems like such an extraordinary decision on the surface that surely it should be defended in public. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Jodrell Bank's Lovell telescope faces axe in science cuts, BBC understands
Astronomers warn it would tear the heart out of UK science, and leave a generation untrained.
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
This is a spectacular paper
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Peter Kok @peterkok.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
The postdoc position in our lab closes 20 July - get applying! :)
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Helen Barron @helencbarron.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
New perspective paper from our lab: “The hippocampus as a generative model” out now !! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article... The traditional view of the hippocampus is that it creates a cognitive map. Here we extend this view to conceptualise the hippocampus as a “generative model”.
royalsocietypublishing.org
The hippocampus as a generative model
Abstract. A generative model can be defined as a model of the latent causes of sensory input that can be used to generate new data samples. By examining em
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
This is one of my favourite things. Direct replication of MEG and fMRI findings in intracranial recordings and a demonstration that cortical representations update in the right direction around hippocampal ripples.
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Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
For a long time I felt like there was a hesitation in neuroscience to ascribe anything like a planning function to the various "replay" events we see in the hippocampus, but I think this is rapidly changing. Here's another new entry in human epilepsy patients: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧠📈 🧪
nature.com
Human hippocampal ripples coordinate planning sequences and compositional representations in neocortex - Nature Neuroscience
Human hippocampal ripples and replay interact with the prefrontal cortex to update mental representations online, letting the brain compositionally combine familiar elements in new ways for flexible p...
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Mohamady El-Gaby @melgaby.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
It wouldn’t be FENS if there wasn’t some sort of clash - definitely check out awesome work by @aryabhomick.bsky.social in Friday morning’s poster session tracking learning dynamics of abstract task structure in the PFC as well as evidence for complex hierarchical learning in rodents!
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Mohamady El-Gaby @melgaby.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Same session contains this exciting new work from friends: Athena Apostolelli @sandra-neuro.bsky.social @mathiassablemeyer.bsky.social and @behrenstimb.bsky.social showing PFC learning dynamics in a spontaneously emerging type of abstraction behaviour in mice
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Adrian Roggenbach @a-roggenbach.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
#FENS2026 poster alert: "Combining flexible electrode recordings with two-photon imaging to investigate brain-wide network coupling" Come to our poster PS01-07AM-375 on Tuesday morning to chat with Linus Meienberg and me, how we use ultra-flexible electrodes together with optical recordings.
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Edvard I Moser @edvardmoser.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Is spatial navigation innate 🧠? Using #NeuroPixels we show that the #torus 🍩 underlying the #GridCell map exists already on day 10 in rats — before pups open eyes and ears and before they start upright walking. 🧵1:4 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Neil Burgess @neilburgess10.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Ever wondered how the hippocampal cognitive map is read-out? @changmin-yu.bsky.social @zilong-ji.bsky.social with Jake & John, show that, during navigation, theta sweeps indicate remembered goal-directions (cf. current/next movements or perceptual targets) 1/2 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Decoded locations from place cell firing sweep towards a remembered goal location during each theta cycle irrespective of the current movement or head direction
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Anna Schapiro @annaschapiro.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
PSA for trainees cold emailing with interest in joining a lab: Be careful about your use of LLMs in writing these emails!! It is now *extremely* common to get emails with a bizarrely-detailed, clearly-LLM take on a paper finding or with specific phrases pulled from the lab website. Don’t do this!
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Joshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 30/06/2026
I feel like she, specifically, should know better
Artificial intelligence
66 Is AI an exoskeleton for the mind?
Technology that helps people do things they couldn't otherwise achieve can also lead to atrophy
Sarah O'Connor
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Alon Baram @alonbaram.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
How does the human brain extract abstract structure from experience? We show that sensory-independent relational representations emerge in mPFC over several days. Work with @mgarvert.bsky.social and @behrenstimb.bsky.social now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social: www.cell.com/current-biol...
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Slightly surprised that @kordinglab.bsky.social are still printing their simulations out on paper to be honest.
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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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Seán Froudist-Walsh @seanfw.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Great to see Mark Stokes getting acknowledged , and also the author senior authors who stepped in, but I’d like to highlight 1st author Michał Wojcik who completed this excellent work from his PhD under such difficult circumstances. He‘s got more good stuff in the pipeline - one to watch
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
I’m grateful that we at least had 2 years of a government trying to fix things apart from their own image, but I wish they had got to universities before the “let’s actually govern” strategy imploded.
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
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Oxford University Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (OxCIN) @oxcin.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
One more week to apply for OxCIN Global Scholars! 🎯For early-career MRI researchers in the Global South 💻Remote 1-year affiliation with OxCIN 🧠Training in MRI physics & FSL 🌎Build global connections 🗓️Deadline 28 June 2026 🔗https://www.oxcin.ox.ac.uk/about/training/global-scholars Please repost!
Global Scholars logo: a turquoise stylized brain in a globe stand
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Seán Froudist-Walsh @seanfw.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
This is such a great opportunity for early career neuroimaging researchers in the Global South and for our centre. Come join our @oxcin.bsky.social community!
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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
The extent of the IF obsession is evident from any and every Google search for a journal - even venues that don't warrant one. This literally makes or breaks journals - non-profits are hit particularly hard - and it stifles innovation and distorts science. 2/2
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
This is the most British use of the word "Allegedly" imaginable. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Arrest over push of woman into bus's path in Putney in 2017
A 44-year-old man is in custody over the incident where a woman appeared to be shoved into the path of a bus.
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Jonathan A. Michaels @jonathanamichaels.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Many of the scientific questions we're interested in tackling require studying learning over long periods of time across the brain. This is challenging – which is why we're excited to say we've been developing a system for chronic wireless recording using long Neuropixels probes in macaque monkeys.
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peterdoohan.bsky.social @peterdoohan.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
All data, analysis code & relevant docs are publicly available. Ready for anyone to start making their own discoveries 💡 See code & data availability section of manuscript :) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Structured and flexible representations in medial-frontal cortex support goal-directed navigation
Humans and animals plan actions to achieve goals in worlds that are complex and continually changing. While planning is critically dependent on the prefrontal cortex in humans, little is known about i...
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Thomas Akam @thomasakam.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
This project builds on work establishing the behaviour done at Champalimaud in Lisbon with @michaelfsp.bsky.social, Beatriz Godinho, Christian Machens, and @ruimcosta.bsky.social : www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Flexible route planning and rapid structure learning by mice in complex environments
Action selection using predictive models of the environment plays a fundamental role in human and animal behaviour, yet is poorly understood at circuit and algorithmic levels. Spatial navigation is an...
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Mohamady El-Gaby @melgaby.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
This paper is so cool that it’s finally convinced @thomasakam.bsky.social to join Bluesky
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Kris Jensen @kristorpjensen.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
It has been super fun to work on this, where we learned that: 1) Mouse PFC is needed for model-based override of habits. 2) Separate PFC populations encode a 'policy' and the current 'value'. 3) The policy and value codes alternate theta sweeps towards the goal. ...and much much more!
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Structured and flexible representations in medial-frontal cortex support goal-directed navigation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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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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