Sign in

Anastasia Christakou 💙

@christakou.bsky.social
756 followers 597 following 647 posts

Professor of Neuroscience 👩‍🎓 own views 🐙 anastasia.christakou.org orcid.org/0000-0002-4267-3436 children's welfare | science | 🧠 brains & their people

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Anastasia Christakou 💙
Dr Dave Hitchcock @davehitchcock.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"AI has not rescued the humanities. What it has done is reveal, with unusual clarity, what happens when societies allow the institutions that cultivate judgement to erode."
corp.oup.com
AI just made the case for philosophy majors; the humanities should not waste it - Oxford University Press
Sophie Goldsworthy, Global Academic Publisher, explores how AI companies hiring philosophers may have made a compelling case for the study of humanities disciplines.
113943
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
hard pass
031
Reposted by Anastasia Christakou 💙
Richard Littler @richardlittler.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The BBC's new director general's brain is smaller on the inside.
32928205
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Delighted to welcome Alicia Juarrero to the UK, and thrilled that she has agreed to give a talk at the @uniofreading.bsky.social tomorrow: What is the difference between a wink and a blink? Dynamics, complexity, and context as understood and misunderstood in contemporary science and philosophy.
010
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Cathartic PSA
020
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
😱 where is the disable button
000
Reposted by Anastasia Christakou 💙
Sander Verhaegh @sanderverhaegh.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Busted!
"100% of this text is AI" score on the first lines of Wittgenstein's Tractatus (Pangram)
612029
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
My two brains
static.klipy.com
Edina and Patsy: Oh, Shut Up!
Alt: Edina and Patsy providing Absolutely Fabulous peer review: Oh, Shut Up!
0121
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Seconded
000
Reposted by Anastasia Christakou 💙
Romain Brette @romainbrette.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
All the "alignment" rhetoric places the problem inside the "AI", seen as an anthropomorphised moral person, but obviously the problem is outside: it is with what we allow these algorithms to interfere with.
172
Reposted by Anastasia Christakou 💙
Dr Keith Wilson 💭 @keithwilson.eu · 13/09/2026
Pay tax.
03210
Reposted by Anastasia Christakou 💙
Aidan Horner @aidanhorner.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
We're hiring! The York Neuroimaging Centre (YNiC) is looking for a Senior Technical Specialist to support & develop MRI. This is a new role to reflect our commitment to pushing forward MRI research at York. Come join the team! jobs.york.ac.uk/vacancy/seni... #neurojobs #neuroskyence #psychscisky
jobs.york.ac.uk
Jobs - The University of York
12428
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The most costly errors we make in building a scientific strategy are always because the humanities and social sciences were not involved. I sincerely hope this headline is taken out of context, and that there's more wisdom than what it implies in the government.
010
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
"The world had learned, at unbearable human cost, what happens when people fleeing war have nowhere safe to go." By @theojames2.bsky.social time.com/article/2026...
time.com
We Must Defend the Refugee Convention
People escaping war and conflict should be able to find safety, writes Theo James.
020
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Characteristically well-informed, and super interesting, by @philipcball.bsky.social The Einstein test: what happens when AI tries to rediscover relativity? www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
The Einstein test: what happens when AI tries to rediscover relativity?
Scientists are probing whether language models trained on historical data can reproduce creative breakthroughs.
012
Reposted by Anastasia Christakou 💙
Melanie Mitchell @melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Hey @ericlipton.nytimes.com 👋 AI is not “evolving” on its own. *People* are choosing how to build it. *People* are choosing how to train it. *People* are choosing how to run it. Maybe the problem is that they are the *wrong people* to make these choices.
28635174
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
AFK
A line of rock shoes drying against a stone wall after a full day's frolicking along the Lakonic coast.
000
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Evidence-based policy builds lasting change and political legacy. London is fortunate for its leadership.
031
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
For all the green highlighting and the love hearts I leave in the margins, in reality, I am an uncharitable note-taker.
a small snippet of notes taken while reading a scientific paper that include the expression *vomit emoji*
010
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
😮 Furiously revising my mental model of functional anatomy. What even is the brain... www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
A non-canonical cholinergic pathway from the dorsal tail of the striatum to the auditory cortex - Nature Communications
Canonical models suggest that striatal communication to the cortex is indirect. Here, the authors identify a direct cholinergic pathway from the striatum to cortex, where striatal neurons directly exc...
040
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Hard agree, this is utterly joyful. Nick Cage is a treasure and I would watch him watching paint dry.
040
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
New Oxford Centre for Women’s Mental Health established www.psych.ox.ac.uk/news/new-oxf... "Funded by the Oxford Medical Sciences Division’s Strategic Research Fund, it will be led by a new Professor of Women’s Mental Health, the first post of its kind at Oxford" 👏
psych.ox.ac.uk
New Oxford Centre for Women’s Mental Health established
The University of Oxford is set to launch a new research centre dedicated to women’s mental health, bringing together expertise from medical and biological sciences with humanities for the first time.
000
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
To the surprise of no-one who considered the issue for more than a few minutes, "Scientists using LLMs will ‘do more, less well’ modelling study predicts". The use of "less refined", a charitable euphemism lifting mountains in this context... 🤔 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Scientists using LLMs will ‘do more, less well’, modelling study predicts
Research suggests that the combination of incentives to publish and the use of large language models will lead to more papers, but they will be less refined.
071
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Another nail in the coffin of fetishisation of large data. I applaud the careful work that goes into this, but averaging physiological detail that in fact fluctuates at multiple timescales, all relevant to thought & behaviour, was never yielding insight. www.thetransmitter.org/sex-differen...
thetransmitter.org
Brain’s sex differences are subtle and contradictory, large MRI study finds
Sex-based behavioral differences do not match with variations in brain activation or structure in a study of almost 1,000 people.
171
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Wilson seems to review a dismal literary adaptation rather than a blockbuster epic in @lrb.co.uk. I agree Nolan's dialogue-driven character development is poor, but she misreads the Trojan Horse sequence & Sinon's willing sacrifice - a smart cinematic device in my view. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Emily Wilson · An Uncomplicated Man
As they say at the awards shows, I was humbled to learn that Christopher Nolan has read at least the first line of my...
000
Reposted by Anastasia Christakou 💙
Dr. Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele @drdragases.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Good grief, this hits home.
324138034877
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
omg it's exhausting 😩
030
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Kakistocracy in full swing. The lack of understanding is absolute. The damage inflicted on what was once a US super-power, its scientific ecosystem, is going to take decades to restore.
020
Reposted by Anastasia Christakou 💙
Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Must be a nerve-wracking moment for Andy Burnham, waiting to meet his sovereign and kiss paws.
1770787
Reposted by Anastasia Christakou 💙
manitou202.bsky.social @manitou202.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
252476
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
"The creation of robust human-curated scientific literature has never been more crucial." www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
AI in scientific publishing: Slower, worse, and more expensive
There’s a saying in the management world, popularized by NASA administrator Daniel Goldin in the 1990s, that the goal of technological improvements is to make products faster, better, and cheaper. Alt...
030
Reposted by Anastasia Christakou 💙
The Women In Science Archive @wisarchive.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Neuroscientist Brenda Milner turns an incredible 108 years old today! In the 1950s she uncovered the role the hippocampus plays in consolidating memories, and in the 1970s she published her seminal studies of speech lateralization. Wishing her all the best today! tinyurl.com/3am8syhf #WomenInSTEM
tinyurl.com
Building a Kingdom in the Brain’s Unfashionable District: Brenda Milner’s Century of Neuropsychology
There are scales and metrics you use to evaluate the lives of most neuropsychologists, and then there are those you have to invent in order to speak with any degree of justice about people like Brenda...
016060
Reposted by Anastasia Christakou 💙
disgruntled lesbian of Minneapolis @phoenix-rights.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
really thinking about this tweet as i’ve been struggling to breathe through nausea for the last 5 hours
climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it
3161022358
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
It's never the children. It's always us.
000
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Another contender for thread of the year.
010
Reposted by Anastasia Christakou 💙
Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Within-participants designs need 2-8x fewer participants than between-participants designs for the same level of precision. Ch 9 of Experimentology argues for making within your default. 🧵 experimentology.io
15715
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
With respect, editors must consider whether their 'expert' on the future of science is in fact a practising scientist. Trawling data for regression coefficients, irrespective of the field of application, is applied computer science, i.e. engineering. Science and engineering are different things.
100
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
The hero we need. Only the English have the balls for this 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿
000
Reposted by Anastasia Christakou 💙
Jim Walters @lordofwalteria.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
#Wikipedia UNDER ATTACK At least 10 editors have been imprisoned. A Saudi pediatrician got 14 years behind bars after editing pages about govt surveillance & a women’s rights activist. Belarus sent one to a penal colony for editing a post about murdered journalists. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/05/b...
nytimes.com
Wikipedia Is Battling for the Soul of the Internet
08054
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
In case you are similarly afflicted, someone sent me this recording of the best @radiohead.bsky.social gig (yes, better than Glasto'97), so now your weekend can start early too: archive.org/details/Radi...
archive.org
Radiohead Live - 2003-05-25 Shepherd's Bush Empire, London, England [Video] : Radiohead : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Broadcast two weeks later on a Sunday night - the day before the new record Hail to the Thief came out - 45 minutes of Radiohead performing a London gig to...
020
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
"we cannot agree that false things are true" 🔥 #NetZero
011
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
what a paper - proper service to the relevant fields 👏
010
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Is this an omen of some kind?
000
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Paging @diovicen.bsky.social 🎸
000
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Absolute scenes 👏
010
Reposted by Anastasia Christakou 💙
Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 28/06/2026
While this essay is centred on mathematics, the gist is the same for any human conceptual thought facing AI Intelligence is process, path-walking, culture, collective, accretive #neuroskyence davidbessis.substack.com/p/the-fall-o...
davidbessis.substack.com
The fall of the theorem economy
How AI could destroy mathematics and barely touch it
1125
Reposted by Anastasia Christakou 💙
SimonRead @simonread.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
London's latest Blue Plaque is a brilliant one. (It was put up at the Tesla dealership in Tottenham by campaigners)
101882656
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Who would have thought... “If you let the superrich infiltrate your democracy they will demand special privileges, reject equality and distort the democratic government to their own ends.” James Truslow Adams, in 1931, as it turns out. Also, anyone who spent a minute considering the issue...
0154
Anastasia Christakou 💙 @christakou.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Rejoice!
010