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Vincent Bonin

@boninlab.bsky.social
660 followers 816 following 177 posts

Neuroscientist @__NERF | @BiologyKULeuven | @VIBLifeSciences | @leuvenbrainins1. Opinions my own. bsky.app/profile/boninlab.bsky.soci…

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Reposted by Vincent Bonin
Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 21h
"Pillay, 85, has a decades long career that spans defending Nelson Mandela and standing up against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa, to leading a United Nations commission that concluded Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza." www.nbcnews.com/world/europe...
nbcnews.com
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to the South African jurist Navanethem “Navi” Pillay.
The South African learned of her prize at a law gathering in Germany, and told the crowd, “If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump.”
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Sarah Ruediger @ruedigersarah.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Excited to share a collaborative #postdoc opportunity between Florencia Iacaruso’s lab at the @crick.ac.uk & my lab at @uclnpp.bsky.social! We’re looking for a postdoc to study neuromodulatory control of sensorimotor transformations in superior colliculus. bit.ly/ModSC26
bit.ly
Neuromodulatory Control of Sensorimotor Transformations in the Superior Colliculus
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PEIPolitical 🇨🇦 @peipolitical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
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Vincent Bonin @boninlab.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Check this out! We at @vibneuroleuven.bsky.social are grateful to @raacampbell.com and the team for the initiative and their support in developing our system.
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Vincent Bonin @boninlab.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I meant de novo recapitulation of brain evolution of cognition and social behavior from the simulation of evolving physical agents. are we that far advanced that we can expect to be able recapitulate the emergence of language and math from physical interactions amongst agents ?
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Vincent Bonin @boninlab.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
finding algorithms that can solve such tasks using (largely) labeled data is an engineering problem and was bound to succeed. the mystery remains how intelligent, autonomous behavior evolved, how it emerged through embodiment and interactions with the physical world.
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Dear @erc.europa.eu , we DO already have common standards & frameworks. 'AI' likes to pose itself as 'special' but we do not need to reinvent the wheel. We already have established codes of conduct for research integrity. We just need to apply them. See below + more resources in thread🧵
Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
We must protect and cultivate the ecosystem of human knowledge. AI models can mimic
the appearance of scholarly work, but they are (by construction) unconcerned with truth
— the result is a torrential outpouring of unchecked but convincing-sounding “informa-
tion”. At best, such output is accidentally true, but generally citationless, divorced from
human reasoning and the web of scholarship that it steals from. At worst, it is confidently
wrong. Both outcomes are dangerous to the ecosystem.
Olivia Guest, Iris van Rooij, Marcela Suarez, et al. (2025, n.p.)
Knowledge production is supposed to be safeguarded by (inter)national codes of conduct for research
integrity (ALLEA 2023; KNAW et al. 2018). Such codes forbid, for instance, fabrication of data,
falsification of results, plagiarism, and, generally, distortion of the scientific record. Many argue that
new rules are required to regulate academic AI use, but pre-existing guidelines fit the bill (cf. Tafani
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Vincent Bonin @boninlab.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Let's put a center at Mar-a-Lago!
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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I'm so impressed with all that's going on at @sinaibrain.bsky.social. Here are 5 highlights. 1. @bshev.bsky.social ++ are measuring dopamine and serotonin *in living human brains* and using them to predict treatment outcomes. Wow. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Dopamine and serotonin transients predict depressive symptom relief following deep brain stimulation of human subcallosal cingulate cortex
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Adema Ribic @ademaribic.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
My blueskyless and twitterless friend Elise Savier has organized a conference for systems neuro of subcortical circuits: broad range of topics, great speakers and I am jealous of the location. Please repost and consider attending
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Andrew Straw @andrewstraw.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
We are hiring! Come join us in the Straw Lab at the @biologyunifreiburg.bsky.social . Seeking a scientist to work on the neural and computational mechanisms of visual navigation in honey bees. uni-freiburg.de/en/job/00005...
Bee trajectories in agricultural landscape and two photon microscope for in-vivo calcium activity imaging.
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Vincent Bonin @boninlab.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
by 'used' I indeed meant that activity manipulations do not have discernible effects on behavior. for the challenging tasks that are limited by representational noise this is not trivial. why does the brain not use all of the available signal?
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Vincent Bonin @boninlab.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
exactly what I thought.
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Ray Monk @raymodraco.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
“The world is standing on the edge of the abyss." The state of the planet is now an acute emergency. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
‘Planetary boundaries’ necessary for flourishing of life have been massively breached, scientists warn
New report shows key indicators of Earth’s health are ‘outside the safe operating space’ as climate disaster looms
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
NSF has reduced the research budget for all atmospheric, ocean, and earth sciences by ~80%. 80%! A lot of us will not be conducting new research or training new students for the foreseeable future.
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Pieter T. L. Beck @ptrbck.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
A longread on why Cofnas is doing pseudoscience, by yours truly. Many thanks to @forbetterscience.bsky.social for hosting the text!
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Jeremiah Cohen @jeremiahycohen.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Happy to share the version of record of our locus coeruleus paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Prior thread on some of our discoveries in this study: bsky.app/profile/jere...
nature.com
Topographic structure and function of locus coeruleus noradrenaline neurons - Nature
Dorsal and ventral noradrenergic neurons in the locus coeruleus form topographic subpopulations whose projection patterns and activity encode choice switching, reward-prediction errors and disregard o...
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Jieyu Zheng @jieyusz.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
An acortical mouse — born without hippocampus and most of its neocortex — learns the Manhattan Maze: a 30× improvement in 5 hours, 18 rewards! Now a question for everyone: How can an acortical brain do this? Leave a comment! Preprint w/ @mameister4.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Kelly Clancy @kellybclancy.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Wrote a piece for MIT Tech Review about the difficulties of using tech to keep kids safe online: ter.li/gmxyan5l
ter.li
Child-monitoring apps might need a reboot
Monitoring apps promise to keep young people safer online, but looking in on kids’ phones can backfire. Online safety experts say there’s a better way.
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Canadian Association for Neuroscience @canacn.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Building Canada’s Future Through Research Investment - Read our latest opinion piece can-acn.org/building-can... Lisez: Bâtir l’avenir du Canada par l’investissement en recherche can-acn.org/fr/batir-lav...
can-acn.org
Bâtir l’avenir du Canada par l’investissement en recherche – Association canadienne des neurosciences
Association canadienne des neurosciences
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Rainer Friedrich @rainerfriedrichlab.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Imaging of activity in the telencephalon of adult zebrafish moving through a virtual reality revealed amazingly precise, structured internal representations of spatial environments. And they get better over time! Great work by Kim! Thanks also to Sriram and Jan. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Dynamic cognitive representations in the dorsal pallium of adult zebrafish
Brains rely on internal models of the world to interpret sensory input and to simulate the future. In the mammalian hippocampal-entorhinal network, environments are represented by cognitive maps that ...
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Vincent Bonin @boninlab.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
PISA 2025 results are out and they are very concerning. Education performance continues to decline, with huge drops in reading and math. This should be a wake-up call to politicians and education leaders. www.oecd.org/en/publicati...
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David @dav1dcg.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Preprint time! What does acetylcholine do in the developing visual cortex, before the eyes even open? Read it here: "Acetylcholine mediates behavioral state-dependent modulation of spontaneous activity in the developing mouse visual cortex" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Acetylcholine mediates behavioral state-dependent modulation of spontaneous activity in the developing mouse visual cortex
Synchronized and desynchronized patterns of spontaneous activity during brain development prepare cortical circuits such as the visual cortex for processing external sensory information. Yet the neuro...
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Rob Campbell @raacampbell.com · 06/09/2026
Our BrainSaw serial-section 2-photon platform acquires whole-organ datasets automatically and requires minimal tissue processing. It has a growing international install base and has contributed to 35 publications. Learn more at: swcmicroscopy.com/brainsaw/ #microscopy #neuroscience
A BrainSaw serial section 2-photon system. This particular example was modified from an TissueCyte 1000 commercial system. Others have been built from scratch or were modified from in vivo multi-photon systems. Each BrainSaw is unique, but all run BakingTray serial section 2-photon acqusition software that plugs into ScanImage. Somatostatin tdTomato transgenic mouse imaged on BrainSaw serial section 2-photon. Full res images acquired at around 1 micron/pixel. Top images derived from 10 micron/voxel isotropic 3D stack. Detail from a BakingTray acquisition obtained from a BrainSaw serial section 2-photon microscope. Image shows three AAV injections leading to expression of fluorescent proteins (mCherry, GFP, and BFP) in layer 5 neurons of mouse primary visual cortex. Imaged at 780 nm.
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Princeton Neuroscience Institute @princetonneuro.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
We're hiring! PNI is recruiting an assistant professor of neuroscience working with non-human primates in any area. Review begins Oct 19: apply.interfolio.com/192521 #NeuroJobs #Neuroskyence
photo of PNI and psychology building
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Jacob Lab @jacob-lab.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
⏰ Three weeks left to apply! ⏰ #Tenure-Track #Assistant #Professor in Implantable Brain–Computer Interfaces. Develop complete #implantable #BCI systems within a highly interdisciplinary environment @tum.de and help translate them toward first-in-human studies. 🔗 Details: www.recruit.tum.de
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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
This “game” on the White House website, a version of Snake where you play as a white man in a suit and you run around picking up identifiably black, Asian, and Latino men and putting them in orange jumpsuits, might be the most openly white supremacist thing I’ve ever seen the US government produce
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Peter Dickson @phdpeter.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Brains of male and female mice recover differently from ketamine www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Brains of male and female mice recover differently from ketamine
Specialized immune cells found in the brain, known as microglia, reach out to neurons in female mice that were given a dose of ketamine anaesthetic.
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Vincent Bonin @boninlab.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Note that behavior in these types of tasks does not (necessarily) require the hippocampus. This further emphasizes the dissociation between encoded information and causal involvement of the neural activity in behavior.
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Vincent Bonin @boninlab.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Some nodes seem more more critical than others. Selectively lesion the hippocampus, for example, strongly perturbs spatially selective activity across cortical areas. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... www.jneurosci.org/content/41/2...
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Vincent Bonin @boninlab.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Also we don't think the signals are truly 'uniformly' distributed. Within RSC for example there are regional differences, which correlate with specific anatomical inputs and vary depending on the type of sensory inputs made available to the animal. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Vincent Bonin @boninlab.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
That contextual signals are broadly available does not mean that signals everywhere are used, or causally involved in behavior, at every moment. They aren’t. A bit like a radio broadcast, information may be widely available while circuits selectively “tune in” when needed. So where still matter.
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Matteo Carandini @carandinilab.net · 31/07/2026
The apical dendrite looks great, and does wonders in a slice. What does it do in the living cortex? It depends on the cell. A causal spatial role for apical dendrites in the cortex www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... by @anyiliu.bsky.social with @kenneth-harris.bsky.social and @fedrossi.bsky.social
A cartoon providing a graphical summary of the paper. It is divided in 3 rows.

The top row shows a pyramidal cell and its apical tuft, and shows the two experiments that we ran: optical dendritic pruning (chopping off the apical tuft), and synaptic imaging done in the same neurons where we do somatic imaging. 

The middle row shows the results pertaining to neurons that prefer large stimuli (this is visual cortex): pruning reduced their responses, and the receptive fields of apical synapses are far away from the that of the soma. 

The bottom row shows the results pertaining to neurons that prefer small stimuli: pruning seemed to do nothing to the responses, and the receptive field of apical synapses are right around that of the soma.
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Anjiolina Nakaya @anjiolina.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
🤣🤣🤣
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Alex Usher @alexusherhesa.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Here is my letter to the MacDonald Laurier Institute on the subject of their appalling research. Use as you will. I recommend sending something of your own, though. And if you know anyone associated with MLI - and Board directors, say - send it to them, too.
docs.google.com
Alex Usher email to Brian Lee Crowley
(text of an email sent to Brian Lee Crowley of the MacDonald Laurier Institute on September 2, 2026) Dear Brian, I am writing to you and your board with respect to the publication “The equity excelle...
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Sarah Dorner @sarahdorner.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Here's my letter to the MacDonald Laurier Institute cc'd to my MP if it inspires anyone else who cares about research impact.
The report’s reliance on the H-index as a primary surrogate for research impact is fundamentally problematic. The H-index is, at best, one bibliometric indicator among many, and it is an imperfect measure even of scholarly impact. It cannot serve as a proxy for research quality, scientific excellence, societal impact, or economic impact. It is particularly ill-suited to comparisons across disciplines, career stages, research communities, and fields with substantially different publication and citation practices. There is no simple correction that can transform the H-index into a valid measure of research excellence across these contexts.

More importantly, reducing research excellence to a single bibliometric indicator overlooks the multidimensional nature of research assessment. Research excellence encompasses the quality and originality of research, its contribution to advancing knowledge, its influence within and beyond academia, its training and mentorship contributions, and its social, environmental, and economic impacts.

The problem is therefore not simply that the H-index is an imperfect measure. It is that the methodology is incapable of measuring the concept that the report purports to evaluate. Such an approach risks creating precisely the kind of simplistic evaluation framework that Canadian research institutions and funding agencies should be working to avoid.

Public debate about equity in research funding is legitimate and important. However, that debate should be grounded in rigorous analysis and appropriate measures of research excellence.

The Macdonald Laurier Institute has an important role to play in contributing to evidence-based public policy discussions. The report does not meet an adequate standard for making claims about research excellence in Canada.

Canadians who rely on sound evidence to inform public policy deserve better.
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Reyes-Lamothe lab @reyes-lab.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
We’re hiring! The Biology department at McGill is hiring a tenure-track professor in Quantitative Cell Biology. We’re looking for an outstanding researcher and educator to join our community. Deadline: October 9 Info & application: mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/McGill_Caree... Please share!
mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com
Assistant Professor in Quantitative Cell Biology - Department of Biology
Please refer to the How to Apply for a Job (for External Candidates) job aid for instructions on how to apply. If you are an active McGill employee (ie: currently in an active contract or position at ...
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Pedro Beltrao @pedrobeltrao.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
8.8% success rate for the ERC Starting Grant is not acceptable. It is a lottery at this point with so many great scientists and ideas left to be funded. We keep talking about the competitiveness of Europe and we can't agree to properly fund our best instrument for scientific innovation.
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jenlhoy.bsky.social @jenlhoy.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
we have a backlog of work coming out over the next year on the development of innate approach/avoidance behavior. Here is part one of five. I hope this helps folks looking at the roots of visually -guided approach v. avoidance decision making.
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Katja Reinhard @katjareinhard.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Now that summer breaks are coming to an end everywhere I'd like to remind you of our Subcortical Sensory Circuits meeting in Trieste in February 2027. Registrations and abstract submissions are open until October 31st and there are many slots for short talks! www.subcortical2027.com
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Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH @gavinyamey.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
WHAT A LINE-UP! Inspirational warriors for scientific truth
Gretchen Goldman, UCS President
Jenna Norton, NIH
Gregg Gonsalves, Yale
Steven Kahn, UW
Elizabeth Villano, Resistance Rangers
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Kanaka Rajan @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
(1/8) Our approach for untangling brain-wide interactions is out today in @cp-neuron.bsky.social! Current-Based Decomposition (CURBD) uses RNNs constrained by real neural data to reveal the input driving neurons, uncovering how brain regions talk to each other. doi.org/10.1016/j.ne... 🧵👇
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The Royal Society @royalsociety.org · 29/08/2026
The Ferrier Medal and Lecture 2027 is awarded to Professor Kenneth Daniel Harris for his contributions to neuroscience by unifying experimental neurophysiology with advanced analytical methods and for pioneering methods that allow recording from thousands of neurons. #RSMedals bit.ly/4qCJZRo
A man in a black shirt smiles at the camera in front of a whiteboard covered in scientific notation.
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Eugen 🇨🇦 @eugen.ca · 27/08/2026
This is the first European cartographic mention of Lake Ontario. The year was 1688. It’s Lake Ontario.
First European cartographic  mention of Lake Ontario - 1688
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ACLU @aclu.org · 30/08/2026
Students have a right to an education free from government censorship.
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Jean-Paul Noel @jpnoel.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
First Noel Lab Pre-print! If you are into "peri-personal space" and feel like we need more single cell recordings, this one is for you! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
An egocentric map prioritizing peri-personal space in the mouse rostro-lateral visual area
All physical interactions between an organism and its environment occur within the space immediately adjacent to and surrounding its body, its peripersonal space (PPS). This space has been extensively...
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Jonathan Howard @joho.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was a content creator who spent the pandemic “calling for” other people to do things. Now, he’s in power and as pathogens spread out of control, all he can say is he’s doing his “best.” I believe him. This is his best. My latest.
sciencebasedmedicine.org
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on Measles: “I Think I’ve Done My Best.”
As football coach Bill Parcells famously said, “you are what your record says you are”.
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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Academic freedom is when a foreign government dictates how and even whether a university investigates misconduct
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Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH @gavinyamey.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
A study of over 4 million kids & young adults concludes that those who receive a Pfizer/Biotech COVID-19 mRNA vaccine have a lower risk of myocarditis, pericarditis, and death than those who do not
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Reese Richardson @reeserichardson.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
A massive update: At least ~15 companies~ are selling scientists antibodies using faked validation data. We've documented 18,000+ manipulated images on 17,000+ products sold by leading laboratory suppliers including Thermo Fisher, Abcam, Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Millipore Sigma and Bio-Techne. 1/🧵
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