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Ian Stevenson

@ihstevenson.bsky.social
211 followers 264 following 29 posts

Neuroscience and Nerdery // stevenson.lab.uconn.edu // ✨mobilis in mobili✨

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Reposted by Ian Stevenson
Patrick Mineault @patrickmineault.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Are virtual flies playing Beat Saber? SM64? Doom? No. The new fly connectome is an incredible achievement! Less is going on in the sim videos than it seems. I'm stoked to see people engage with neuroscience though. My breakdown: www.neuroai.science/p/are-flies-...
neuroai.science
Are flies playing Beat Saber?
What a time to be alive!
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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Really wise (and delightful) *DO NOTs* for speaking. Among my favorites: "Design your talk so that <30% of the audience understands it". Even if your discoveries are very important, that's bad. Value = f(discovering stuff, explaining that stuff coherently). 🎯.
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Thomas Dietterich @tdietterich.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
Excellent and thought-provoking essay by Ted Chiang. [gift link] www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2...
theatlantic.com
No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious
Taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking is absurd—and damning.
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Jess Cardin @jess-cardin.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Do brain circuits really sit in a 'soup' of neuromodulators? Are neurons like soggy bits of bread soaked in signaling factors? Is the whole brain just squelching around in one big pool of warm modulators?
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Athena Akrami @athenaakrami.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
Academic friends, It's beyond heartbreaking to watch what's unfolding in Iran & the region. A few of us drafted an open letter calling for protection of civilians & of educational, research, medical & cultural institutions. Please read & sign if you agree: sites.google.com/view/protect... #IranWar
sites.google.com
Protect Academic Life in Iran
We, the undersigned academics and researchers from around the world, express our profound concern over recent military strikes on Iran, the retaliatory responses, and the reported impact on civilian l...
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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
"AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more." This piece on AI by Cory Doctorow is spectactular. pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...
The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI (permalink)
Last night, I gave a speech for the University of Washington's "Neuroscience, AI and Society" lecture series, through the university's Computational Neuroscience Center. It was called "The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI," and it's based on the manuscript for my next book, "The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI," which will be out from Farrar, Straus and Giroux next June:
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Ian Stevenson @ihstevenson.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
New paper out related to this job ad! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Alex used perceptual responses to predict discomfort ratings for arbitrary environmental sounds
sciencedirect.com
Identifying the acoustic fingerprints of trigger sounds and predicting discomfort for misophonia
Human hearing is critical to everyday communication and the perception of natural auditory scenes. For individuals with misophonia, sounds commonly ex…
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Reposted by Ian Stevenson
Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 27/08/2025
I considered writing a long carefully constructed argument laying out the harms and limitations of AI, but instead I wrote about being a hater. Only humans can be haters.
anthonymoser.github.io
I Am An AI Hater
I am an AI hater. This is considered rude, but I do not care, because I am a hater.
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Rob Johnson @blobology.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
To study how animals understand the physical world (and the rules that govern its dynamics), @jinyao-y.bsky.social trains rats to play fetch with robots 🐀🤖🎾 To learn more, come to our poster Tuesday morning! [Board W11] Rats learn and use intuitive physics knowledge to solve fetch tasks. #SfN2025
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Ian Stevenson @ihstevenson.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
FYI 🧠 -- We are recruiting for a postdoc interested in computational models of hearing at UConn. Reach out if you have questions jobs.hr.uconn.edu/en-us/job/49...
jobs.hr.uconn.edu
UConn Careers
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Reposted by Ian Stevenson
SfN Journals @sfnjournals.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
#JNeurosci: Clonan et al. investigated how people detect speech in environments with different background noises occurring at a consistent loudness. doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1751-24.2…
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Juan Gallego @juangallego.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
Very happy about my former mentor Sara Solla having received the Valentin Braitenberg Award for her lifelong contributions to computational neuroscience! Sara will be giving a lecture at the upcoming @bernsteinneuro.bsky.social meeting which you shouldn't miss. bernstein-network.de/en/newsroom/...
bernstein-network.de
Sara A. Solla receives the Valentin Braitenberg Award for Computational Neuroscience 2025 – Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience
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Yohan J John @dryohanjohn.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
This is a pretty cool exploration of dissonance in music. youtu.be/tCsl6ZcY9ag?...
youtu.be
The Physics Of Dissonance
YouTube video by minutephysics
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Ian Stevenson @ihstevenson.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
some pintographs 4/∞
a complicated curve from a pintographa complicated curve from a pintographa complicated curve from a pintographa complicated curve from a pintograph
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Kári Tulinius @kattullus.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Ursula K. Le Guin on the true pain of being a writer
Screenshot of a single question and answer from interview in the Times Literary Supplement with Ursula K. Le Guin. Here is the quote:

If you could make a change to anything you’ve written over the years, what would it be?

In The Dispossessed, I would mention the communal pickle barrels at street corners in the big towns, restocked by whoever in the community has made or kept more pickles than they need. I knew about the free pickles all along, but never could fit them into the book.
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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
I want everyone to how rapidly a euphemistic language of acquiescence has been codified among the administrative class, insulating the perpetrators of this chaos from blame.
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Sarah Hird, PhD @sarahhird.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Today! Hartford Stand Up For Science! #nutmegsky
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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
In honor of today’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science, The Transmitter spoke with eight women neuroscientists leading initiatives that strive to promote women in the field. www.thetransmitter.org/qa/how-eight... #WomenInScience #February11
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Erin Kane @dianamonkey.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
In case folks are interested in contacting their congresspeople about the NIH indirect cuts with some estimates of what they would mean for institutions in their state, here are some estimates based on published F&A rates and funding ... let me know if you want a particular state
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 04/02/2025
Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? Jevin West (@jevinwest.bsky.social) and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take. thebullshitmachines.com
thebullshitmachines.com
INTRODUCTION
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Jonathan Peelle @jpeelle.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
When teaching about speech production (which I'm doing today) I always enjoy this Pink Trombone demo Also: If you really really really hate someone show this to their kids dood.al/pinktrombone/
A picture of a pink cartoon mouth with a nasal cavity, oral cavity, sort palate, hard palate, lip, and tongue
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Chethan Pandarinath @chethanp.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
How can we build BCIs that operate robustly in the face of nonstationarities? Our @neuripsconf.bsky.social Datasets and Benchmarks paper introduces the Few-shot Algorithms for Consistent Neural Decoding (FALCON) Benchmark! Led by Brianna Karpowicz and @joelye.bsky.social
the Few-shot Algorithms for Consistent Neural Decoding (FALCON) Benchmark
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Ian Stevenson @ihstevenson.bsky.social · 16/11/2024
Faculty Position 🧠👩‍🏫 -- UConn BME is hiring for an Assistant/Associate Professor in ML including Neural Engineering... jobs.hr.uconn.edu/en-us/job/49... #compneuro #MLSky
jobs.hr.uconn.edu
UConn CareersSearch UConnUConn A to Z Index
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Dan Levenstein @dlevenstein.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
...what is known in the trade as a "vigorous discussion" 😂
A passage from the book describing a heated debateA figure from the book with hippocampal traces from different behavioral states
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Ian Stevenson @ihstevenson.bsky.social · 16/11/2024
Faculty Position 🧠👩‍🏫 -- UConn BME is hiring for an Assistant/Associate Professor in ML including Neural Engineering... jobs.hr.uconn.edu/en-us/job/49... #compneuro #MLSky
jobs.hr.uconn.edu
UConn CareersSearch UConnUConn A to Z Index
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Uma Karmarkar @umakarma.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
I can't find where the original for this came from, but it made my day.
A cartoon picture of two glasses with straws in them. The glasses are filled with milk tea (a light beige liquid). The left glass has round dark objects in it and is labeled "boba tea". The right glass has pointy or star shaped dark objects in it and is labeled "kiki tea"
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Amy Orsborn @neuroamyo.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
Fun to see this place coming a bit more alive! I tried my hand at a starter pack for neural engineering & computationally-leaning (systems) neuroscience. Super not exhaustive, so if you want to be added (or removed), just ping me. I'm still working on finding folks here. go.bsky.app/Ty3ftme
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Jonathan Cornford @repromancer.bsky.social · 28/10/2024
Why does #compneuro need new learning methods? ANN models are usually trained with Gradient Descent (GD), which violates biological realities like Dale’s law and log-normal weights. Here we describe a superior learning algorithm for comp neuro: Exponentiated Gradients (EG)! 1/12 #neuroscience 🧪
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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 23/09/2024
We’re excited to welcome @markdhumphries.bsky.social, author of “The Spike,” as our new columnist. Check out his first piece, in which he explores how averaging is a convenient fiction of neuroscience. www.thetransmitter.org/neural-codin...
thetransmitter.org
Averaging is a convenient fiction of neuroscience
But neurons don’t take averages. This ubiquitous practice hides from us how the brain really works.
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Ian Stevenson @ihstevenson.bsky.social · 04/09/2024
Optimist: cup is ½ full Pessimist: cup is ½ empty Neuroscientist: The activity of cups in this cabinet provides an accurate representation of liquid volume. However, experiments (e.g. burning down the kitchen or spraying it with a hose) are needed to verify the causal nature of this representation
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Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 04/09/2024
Optimist: cup is ½ full Pessimist: cup is ½ empty Neuroscientist: this is a half-half cup. As seen in the supplemental, 22% of all cups are half-half type, which is significantly more than chance. Other major types we observed were full cups (10%), quarter-half cups (12%), and empty cups (6%). 🧠📈
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Ian Stevenson @ihstevenson.bsky.social · 23/08/2024
essential stereogram content -- stevenson-lab.media.uconn.edu/wp-content/u...
stereogram of cat from 1915
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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 01/07/2024
Since i didn't know how much I needed it until i heard it, let me just say that a thing you could maybe really use right now is @levarburton.bsky.social reading you Ray Bradbury's "The Toynbee Convector." pca.st/episode/a144...
pca.st
"The Toynbee Convector" by Ray Bradbury - LeVar Burton Reads
The best short fiction, handpicked by the best voice in podcasting and presented in 3D immersive audio. In every episode, host LeVar Burton (Roots, Reading Rainbow, Star Trek) invites you to take a br...
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Uma Karmarkar @umakarma.bsky.social · 15/03/2024
This is maybe my favorite "scientist profile" article I've ever seen - those of us who might have otherwise claimed an unusual or unorthodox career path need to sit right down. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
The neuroscientist formerly known as Prince’s audio engineer
Susan Rogers worked with the legendary singer-songwriter before earning a PhD in her 50s on auditory memory and how we listen to music throughout life. Susan Rogers worked with the legendary singer-so...
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Ian Stevenson @ihstevenson.bsky.social · 15/02/2024
New preprint with work from Alex Clonan modeling speech recognition in natural noise! 👂💬🧠🤖🤯 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Low-dimensional interference of mid-level sound statistics predicts human speech recognition in natural environmental noise
bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution
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Joanna Tai @drjot.bsky.social · 19/01/2024
Wonderful to read this article be able to put a name to writing techniques. It's like being back in English class but for academic writing!
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Benjamin Cowley @benjocowley.bsky.social · 19/12/2023
New work! Compact deep neural network models of visual cortex B. Cowley, P. Stan, J. Pillow*, M. Smith* tiny.cc/dmxhvz Task-driven DNN models nicely predict neural responses but have millions of params---next to impossible to explain. Do they need to be so large?
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Patrick Mineault @patrickmineault.bsky.social · 31/12/2023
Closing out the year with one last post 🎉 A look at theories of everything of the brain, featuring A Brief History of Intelligence by Max Bennett, Cisek's phylogenetic refinement, and Chris Eliasmith's How to Build a Brain. www.neuroai.science/p/an-end-of-...
neuroai.science
An end-of-year look at theories of everything
Theories of everything, everywhere, all at once
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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 30/12/2023
What a year for Neuroscience! Annual fabulous and clever Review by Mark Humphries. Big year for dopamine and cell types. medium.com/the-spike/20...
medium.com
2023: A Review of the Year in Neuroscience
Dopamine is not the only fruit
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Ian Stevenson @ihstevenson.bsky.social · 19/12/2023
Really thought-provoking! I think the "is it controllable" question really depends a lot on the case. At one extreme, some brain functions are evolved to be controlled. Netflix frequently has high-d, super fast control of my visual cortex. 1/4 bsky.app/profile/nico...
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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 18/12/2023
My new piece for @thetransmitter.bsky.social. Why is treating brain dysfunction so ENORMOUSLY challenging? Because it amounts to controlling a complex system. Drawing from the history of weather research, I pose the question: Can it even be done? www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...
thetransmitter.org
Is the brain uncontrollable, like the weather?
The brain may be chaotic. Does that mean our efforts to control it are doomed?
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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 20/11/2023
famous moments in psychology / cog-sci as lego sets, a thread. 1. Pavlov's dogs.
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Ian Stevenson @ihstevenson.bsky.social · 20/11/2023
We have a new preprint out with some progress on the puzzle of why many Bayesian decoders are overconfident... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
plot from paper illustrating over/under confidence
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Ian Stevenson @ihstevenson.bsky.social · 16/11/2023
cashless society when? arxiv.org/abs/2310.04153
arxiv.org
Fair coins tend to land on the same side they started: Evidence...
Many people have flipped coins but few have stopped to ponder the statistical and physical intricacies of the process. In a preregistered study we collected 350,757 coin flips to test the...
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Ian Stevenson @ihstevenson.bsky.social · 15/11/2023
Three more posters at #SfN23 this afternoon, presented by Jenna, Jimmy, and Abhijith 🧠📈 #SfN2023 www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10892... www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10892... www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10892...
poster times and titles
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Ian Stevenson @ihstevenson.bsky.social · 14/11/2023
Check out our two posters today at #SfN23 from Niloo and Alex! #SfN2023 www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10892... www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10892...
titles and times for posters
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Ian Stevenson @ihstevenson.bsky.social · 31/10/2023
Faculty position opening: Assistant Professor of Systems Neuroscience, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs. Detailed Info here: jobs.hr.uconn.edu/en-us/job/49... #neuroskyence #PsychSciSky
Picturesque UConn campus during fall on a clear day
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Mindy Weisberger @laminda.bsky.social · 22/10/2023
I love Ursula Vernon's work so much, and this was a great speech! If you're curious about what it looks like when a swallowed beetle reaches the "light at the end of the frog," here are some details (& video) from Shinji Sugiura, the Kobe University scientist who documented it for the first time 🧪
livescience.com
After being swallowed alive, water beetle stages 'backdoor' escape from frog's gut
Life's journey sometimes takes you to unexpected places.
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