Sign in

Alex Williams

@itsneuronal.bsky.social
1.7K followers 564 following 83 posts

Asst Prof at NYU + Flatiron Institute Computational + Statistical Neuroscience neurostatslab.org

PostsRepliesMedia
Alex Williams @itsneuronal.bsky.social · 13h
For better and for worse... our field is way too poorly specified 🙃
2111
Reposted by Alex Williams
Simons Foundation @simonsfoundation.org · 06/10/2026
We are #hiring! We have numerous openings across the organization, including computational research jobs at our @flatironinstitute.org: bit.ly/4dFEufT #science #math
three people sit at a table and do a puzzle
035
Reposted by Alex Williams
Andrew Lampinen @lampinen.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I gave a talk yesterday at a CiNeT / University of Osaka conference about AI & neuroscience. I started with this question — given that AI (especially language models) and brains are so different in structure and environment, how could they have anything to do with one another? 1/
how could AI and neuroscience have anything to do with each other? (very different illustrations of a robot in a world of binary, and a monkey in a rainforest)
1263
Reposted by Alex Williams
Alish Dipani @alishdipani.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Finding a "face neuron" in an ANN doesn't mean it encodes faces like we do. 🧵 In my first project with @apurvaratan.bsky.social, we show that category selectivity in ANNs ≠ category selectivity in brains. Details in thread + preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Feedback or questions welcome!
biorxiv.org
Category selectivity observed in the human brain is distinct from category selectivity observed in artificial neural networks
Category selectivity for images of faces, scenes, and bodies is among the most striking and reproducible findings in vision neuroscience. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) trained on visual tasks also...
0227
Reposted by Alex Williams
Kohitij Kar @kohitij.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
New paper from the lab! www.cell.com/current-biol... An object isn’t always where we perceive it to be. We used a classic visual illusion to ask whether primate brains and AI models represent this perceptual reality similarly. Macaque IT follows perception. Most current vision models don’t.
0132
Reposted by Alex Williams
David G. Clark @david-g-clark.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
📣 Multiple Flatiron Research Fellow (FRF) postdoc positions are available in my @flatironinstitute.org group! We've never been better positioned to understand how high-dimensional nonlinear dynamical systems (neural circuits!) compute. If this is as exciting to you as it is to me, consider applying:
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
13219
Reposted by Alex Williams
Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
A project that I've been working on for the last couple of years (on & off), dealing with the question of how firing rates of neuronal populations change (1/6).
1126
Reposted by Alex Williams
Weiji Ma @weijima.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This was one of the cleanest, most straightforward projects I've ever done, from the hypothesis to the design to the conclusion. Of course still a lot of models, and it was made to look easy just because @jordanlei.bsky.social was so capable!
0203
Reposted by Alex Williams
John Pearson @jmxpearson.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
🚨Postdoc hiring alert! 🚨 Applications for the Flatiron Research Fellows 2027 cohort at the Center for Computational Neuroscience are now live: apply.interfolio.com/193800. Come work with us!
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
11917
Reposted by Alex Williams
Sandra Romero Pinto @sromeropinto.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Happy to have this finally out! TL;DR: The evolution of beliefs over time can be formulated as a dynamical system, and OFC neural activity appears to implement this system with its own dynamics. These emerge without explicit supervision—when animals learn to predict value in simple Pavlovian tasks
14518
Reposted by Alex Williams
Matt Lovett-Barron @mlovettbarron.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Our lab's latest paper on the neurobiology of collective behavior is now published www.nature.com/articles/s41... This is the work of a great team in the lab - led by Jo-Hsien Yu, with Geoff Meyerhof, Jimjohn Milan, and Julia Napoli @nature.com @danionella.bsky.social
1011861
Reposted by Alex Williams
Rebecca Saxe @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I have a question about the future of metrics for hiring and promoting faculty in science. Academic journal articles have been our currency for a long time, but are under extreme & mounting pressure. Is any dept or field already using a better metric *for hiring and promoting faculty*?
114817
Reposted by Alex Williams
Gautam Kamath @gautamkamath.com · 16/09/2026
Nihar Shah did a heroic experiment for TMLR: he spent 20-25 hours over two weeks interviewing authors of seemingly low-quality submissions about their own papers. He confirmed what we all suspected: people submitting these papers have *no idea* what is going on in them.
5293117
Reposted by Alex Williams
Ken Miller @kenmiller.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
My god. This plus $100K for H1B visa that follows OPT. Making it impossible for foreign students to work in the US
12110
Reposted by Alex Williams
Timothy O'Leary @timothyoleary.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
This is not just a wake up call for AI in research, it's an inadvertent comment on what needs to change in research culture: "the mass production at faster and faster pace of "true/false" statements could destroy fertile ground instead of breathing life into new ideas"
0132
Reposted by Alex Williams
COSYNE @cosynemeeting.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
📢Have work to share with the computational and systems neuroscience community? Abstract submissions for #COSYNE2027 are now open. Deadline: 18 October 2026, 11:59 p.m. AoE Submit your abstract: www.cosyne.org/abstracts-su... #Neuroscience
06943
Reposted by Alex Williams
Drew Schreiner @schreinerdrew.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I’m on the faculty job market this fall! 🐦🧠 I’m an NIH K99/R00 awardee studying how the brain learns complex skills, using birdsong to connect molecules, synapses, circuits, behavior & computation. Know of a search where I might fit? Please send it my way & share!
drewschreiner.github.io
Drew Schreiner, Ph.D. | Neuroscience of Learning
I use birdsong to understand how the brain learns complex skills across molecules, synapses, circuits, behavior, and computation. On the 2026–27 faculty job market.
611557
Reposted by Alex Williams
Marlene Cohen @marlenecohen.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Now out in Nature Neuroscience: fantastic work by @cxue.bsky.social, Sol Markman et al who discovered a neural reason that performance suffers under cognitive load: “Feature interference underlies a neuronal basis for the behavioral cost of task uncertainty”. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪🧵1/
nature.com
Feature interference underlies a neuronal basis for the behavioral cost of task uncertainty - Nature Neuroscience
Using a combined approach of monkey electrophysiology, artificial neural networks and human psychophysics, Xue et al. show that neuronal interference from irrelevant information underlies behavioral e...
312040
Reposted by Alex Williams
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft @maxplanck.de · 09/09/2026
We are hiring! Start at a #MaxPlanckInstitute with your own independent Max Planck Research Group. This position is equivalent to a W2 Professorship at a German university, or Associate Professor internationally. 🔗Apply until October 14th! www.mpg.de/career/max-p... #ScienceCareer #MPRG #TenureTrack
Call for independent Max Planck Research Groups
0112136
Reposted by Alex Williams
Adam Carter @carterlab.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Excited to share our new Cell Reports paper on paratenial thalamus (PT), which identifies a molecular marker for PT, and shows how PT interacts with the medial prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, and basolateral amygdala, all done by my grad student Nigel Dao: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
0155
Reposted by Alex Williams
Vinny Costa @vincentcostaphd.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
More stories like this one, please and thank you www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/s...
nytimes.com
The 92-Year-Old Mathematician and the Teenage Apprentice
Joan Birman thought her major discoveries were behind her. Then came an email from a young neighbor — a girl who knew little but wanted to learn.
0189
Reposted by Alex Williams
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
04853
Reposted by Alex Williams
Erin Rich @erinlrich.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Hey, we’ve been studying mnemonic chunking in🐒! With @fkchiang89.bsky.social Here’s the rundown: 🧵 www.cell.com/current-biol...
cell.com
Compression as a neural mechanism of mnemonic chunking in prefrontal cortex
Chiang and Rich show that macaques spontaneously chunk spatial targets in a self-ordered working memory task. dlPFC neurons compress chunked targets into lower-dimensional representations that are shi...
16921
Reposted by Alex Williams
Jim Heys @jim-heys.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I’m very excited to share our new paper, led by the very talented Jack Bowler, a postdoc in the lab! www.nature.com/articles/s41... We all know that the way we learn something matters. But how does a training curriculum actually shape how the brain learns to solve a problem? a 🧵 1/N
nature.com
Structured experience shapes strategy learning and neural dynamics in the medial entorhinal cortex - Nature Neuroscience
The authors use recurrent neural networks to predict how structured prior experience shapes neural dynamics as mice learn flexible timing strategies during complex context-dependent behavior.
47723
Reposted by Alex Williams
Joao Barbosa @jbarbosa.org · 03/09/2026
I can finally tell the world that i was selected for an ERC stg 🤯 Maybe this what people mean when they say they are "humbled by" but I am at peak imposter syndrome, and I really mean it: 1/
291459
Reposted by Alex Williams
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... 🧵👇
211838
Reposted by Alex Williams
Arkarup Banerjee @arkarupbanerjee.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Apply to be our colleague 👇🏽
073
Reposted by Alex Williams
Benjamin Cowley @benjocowley.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
CSHL is hiring a new BioAI faculty member, part of a multi-year hiring process for the Foundations of the Future. We need to fill a new BioAI building, come join! www.cshl.edu/about-us/car...
02610
Reposted by Alex Williams
Martin Schrimpf @mschrimpf.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Hiring postdocs @EPFL: please reach out and/or apply to the AI Center fellowship www.epfl.ch/research/fun.... My #NeuroAI group is excited about testing and building models of brain and behavior, from sensory through language to cognition, and from healthy to dysfunction (treatment)! 🧠🤖🧪
epfl.ch
EPFL AI Center and Swiss AI Initiative Postdoctoral Fellowships
The 3rd call is now open with a submission deadline on 9 November 2026 17:00 (CET).
0158
Reposted by Alex Williams
kriegeskorte.bsky.social @kriegeskorte.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
To learn how brains compute, we need to experimentally adjudicate among competing computational hypotheses. How do we do this in the age of complex neural network models? New review paper: “Making models disagree to learn how brains compute” with @talgolanneuro.bsky.social @heikoschuett.bsky.social
1348
Reposted by Alex Williams
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...
25415
Reposted by Alex Williams
Tal Golan @talgolanneuro.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
How can we design experiments that make computational models disagree? One section of our new @natrevneuro.nature.com Review with @kriegeskorte.bsky.social and @heikoschuett.bsky.social examines studies that used stimulus sets designed to elicit distinct predictions from competing models. 1/16
114156
Reposted by Alex Williams
Dan Goodman @neural-reckoning.org · 27/08/2026
Lots of science happens at talks, and if you're not there you don't get to see what's happening. I find that this excludes lots of people, and isn't fair. So, from now on I'll try to upload all my talk slides at least to my website (videos when available): neural-reckoning.org/talks.html
neural-reckoning.org
Talks
2438
Alex Williams @itsneuronal.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
This is part of why I don't love "bits per spike" because the periods of silence are in a sense equally informative.
050
Alex Williams @itsneuronal.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
It's worth noting that silent bins are essentially equally informative to reject the null on that cell. Often you end up rejecting with zero spikes! The 27 Hz flat baseline predicts 1.35 spikes per bin. Several straight time bins of 0 spikes are enough to reject the baseline.
130
Alex Williams @itsneuronal.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Yeah it's for benchmarking Poisson rate models, though the argument would be that these model can in principle capture spike timing if you build them to work at really small time bins. The idea could be extended to multiple neurons in a population, but I haven't written that up.
020
Reposted by Alex Williams
Yasmine El-Shamayleh @elshamayleh.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Excited to share the lab’s first publication, co-led by talented postdoc Chuyi Su @chuyisu.bsky.social We leveraged cell type-specific optogenetics in the macaque cerebral cortex to elucidate the role of excitatory and inhibitory neurons in visual form processing. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Optotagging in primate cortex uncovers excitatory and inhibitory neuron specializations in form vision - Nature Communications
This study leverages cell type-specific optogenetics in the monkey cerebral cortex to elucidate the unique functional contributions of excitatory and inhibitory neurons in visual form processing. The ...
36317
Alex Williams @itsneuronal.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Glad you liked it Adrien! It started as a blog post but someone wanted to cite it so I put it on arxiv neurostatsblog.github.io/2026/05/27/m...
neurostatsblog.github.io
Bits per Spike as a Betting Game · neurostatsblog
Whenever we fit a model to neural or behavioral data, we need to benchmark it against simpler or well-known baselines.Typically this is done by reporting the...
141
Reposted by Alex Williams
Adrien Peyrache @apeyrache.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Interesting piece in which @itsneuronal.bsky.social suggests dropping the common bit-per-spike metric & reporting the duration of held-out data to validate a model Seems to be just 120ms of data for a sharply tuned, high firing rate head-direction cell, i.e. just 3-4 spikes arxiv.org/abs/2607.28779
arxiv.org
Bits per Spike as a Betting Game: An Interpretable Unit for Held-Out Log-Likelihood in Neural Data Analysis
Held-out log-likelihood is the standard currency for comparing statistical models of neural spike trains, and is often reported as bits per spike relative to a homogeneous Poisson baseline. The units ...
2276
Reposted by Alex Williams
Marlene Cohen @marlenecohen.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Now out at PNAS! The final version includes a smart analysis suggested by a reviewer showing that biomarkers collected in blood track our neural population metrics. A very exciting connection between basic neurophys and translational approaches. Congrats to all! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
65220
Reposted by Alex Williams
Nicola Grissom @nicolagrissom.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
You know how the old saying goes, COME to Minnesota for the tenure track opening in Computational Approaches to Perception and/or Cognition in the Department of Psychology STAY in Minnesota for the amazing quality of life Details here: hr.myu.umn.edu/psc/hrprd/EM...
hr.myu.umn.edu
13315
Reposted by Alex Williams
Dan Levenstein @dlevenstein.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Yale Neuroscience is hiring another computational neuroscience position this year! Please share with anyone who might be interested, and feel free to reach out if you have any questions about the position, or growing neuro-AI community at Yale/WTI!
14324
Reposted by Alex Williams
The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Being able to record from large neuron populations has led to myriad methods to compare them, writes @itsneuronal.bsky.social. But we still grapple with how to convert measures of likeness into better mechanistic understanding. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/neural-dynam...
thetransmitter.org
Mind over metrics: How can we tell if two brains (or AI models) are alike?
The ability to record from large populations of neurons has triggered the development of myriad methods for comparing them. But we’re still grappling with how to convert measures of likeness into a…
0199
Reposted by Alex Williams
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...
212043
Alex Williams @itsneuronal.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
The difference between Σ s_i² and Σ s_i seems minor, but intuitively the former (CKA/RSA) places greater emphasis on the top PCs. Procrustes is often a more stringent notion of similarity, and this paper by Nathan Cloos shows that the difference can matter. proceedings.iclr.cc/paper_files/...
120
Alex Williams @itsneuronal.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Your observation that "if s_i are the singular values of the centered cross-covariance, CKA weights shared modes through Σ s_i², while Procrustes uses Σ s_i" is exactly what we discuss here, alongside equivalence of Procrustes to Bures distance on Gram matrices proceedings.mlr.press/v243/harvey24a
140
Alex Williams @itsneuronal.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
§A.13.3 notes RSA and CKA differ over the diagonal vs row/column means. Indeed, adding a mean-centering step to RSA makes the two equivalent, for linear and nonlinear variants as shown here: proceedings.mlr.press/v285/william...
120
Alex Williams @itsneuronal.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Enjoying reading this! Your Lemma 22 bounds Procrustes error by CKA in one direction, with a rank factor. Proposition 3 from our paper derives a two-sided version with a sharp constant that depends on participation ratio: proceedings.mlr.press/v285/harvey2...
120
Reposted by Alex Williams
Josh McDermott @joshhmcdermott.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
If at CCN, please check out three posters from our lab today. In the morning session: A62 - Deep Learning Models of Attention Reveal Peripheral Encoding as a Bottleneck for Selective Listening Through Cochlear Implants, by Annesya Banerjee
172
Reposted by Alex Williams
Marcelo Mattar @marcelomattar.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Very excited to attend #CCN2026 this week and to present various projects from my lab! Here's a list of our posters and talks in case you'd like to see what we've been up to.
0519