iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Erin J. Wamsley 🧠📈😴 @wamsleylab.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The fiscal year is over. The dying Social, Behavioral, and Economic division of NSF ended up awarding 90 total grants this year, as opposed to ~700-800 in recent past years. Source: grantwitness.org/nsf/analyses...

The graph shows the cumulative number of awards made by month across this fiscal year, as compared to the last 6 fiscal years. The line for this year is total flat until June, but then finally gets up to 91 by October. In prior years the increase starts building earlier and ends on average in the 700-800 range (with variability, last year was only between 400-500).

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Melissa Franch, PhD @mfranch.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Excited to see this work published! We find that the brain codes semantic relationships similar to contextual LLMs (like GPT2) but unlike LLMs, uses contrastive coding to prevent confusion of highly similar words. Many thanks to the reviewers and BCM neurosurgery team! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

A population code for semantics in human hippocampus - Nature Neuroscience

Franch et al. show that human hippocampal neurons encode the meanings of the words we hear through distributed, context-sensitive population activity that mirrors some features of large language model...

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Hayoung Song @hayoungsong.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Medial PFC interacts with the hippocampus to retrieve context-congruent memories.. but HOW?? was what started this. Simulating mPFC-HIP🧠, we designed an RNN🤖 that retrieves memories similar in context, on top of self-attention. It learns to retrieve like humans faster! arxiv.org/abs/2609.37791

arxiv.org

A neural network that maintains and retrieves memories based on context

Every day, people continuously infer situational context and adjust the way they understand and remember the world. Context, signaled by the prefrontal cortex, is known to modulate working memory and ...

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Amitai Shenhav @ashenhav.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

2 yrs ago, I briefly laid out a new theory of how motivation works (AGH). Here, I expand on the problems AGH was trying to solve, why they are hard to solve, what my solution looks like, and how this should change our understanding of thoughts & actions. osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵A few highlights:

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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Reminder that in Canada upon becoming an engineer you get an iron ring made of a collapsed bridge, purposely designed to be uncomfortable, to remind you that your ethics demand you give a fuck even about the boring grudgework of such as double-checking your math. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring

en.wikipedia.org

Iron Ring - Wikipedia

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Heather Urry @heatherurry.io · 24/09/2026

holy fucking shit - see Claude Code (Opus 5.5) rip through a survey eligility test I was really proud of... It requires tracing a route through designated points on a map with server-side Javascript applying eligibility criteria. (1.5 min video)

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Carsten Schwemmer @cschwem2er.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

1/6 What happens when you tell an AI browser: “Fill out this survey”? It fills out the survey. In our new study, led by @rtopinkova.bsky.social, we tested three consumer-facing agentic browsers without lengthy prompts, custom code, or technical fine-tuning.

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Siri Leknes @sirileknes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Ever had opioids & enjoyed them? Our work shows you might be a minority- or the enjoyment stemmed from pain relief? We compared preoperative opioid effects (RCT, N=199, little pain) & found: 🟥 LARGE effects on drug high/sedation/dizziness 🔸SMALL effects on well-being www.cell.com/cell-reports...

cell.com

Intoxication and other subjective effects of preanesthetic opioids in surgical patients: A randomized controlled trial

Karlsen et al. show that patients experience marked undesirable effects but minimal desirable effects after preoperative intravenous opioids.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Article is useful in that it shows that a) Trump is directly involved in these decisions, b) sees them in purely personalist terms - he wants to politicize research grants so he can destroy Harvard for daring to defy him

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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...

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Robert Rozeske @rrrozeske.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I'm thrilled to share our recent publication “Overlapping representations in the ventral hippocampus support rapid fear memory retrieval” www.nature.com/articles/s41... We asked, what is the moment-to-moment link between HPC spatial representations, memory retrieval, and fear behaviour?

nature.com

Overlapping representations in the ventral hippocampus support rapid fear memory retrieval - Nature Neuroscience

Fear learning increases the similarity of threatening and neutral context representations in ventral CA1, which may enable faster reinstatement of threat memories, compared to dorsal CA1.

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Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD @arghavansallesmd.medsky.social · 16/09/2026

I am suing the NIH. As part of a class action with the ACLU and 16 other plaintiffs, we are challenging the thousands of unlawful grant terminations in an effort to get them all reinstated. Whatever happens, at the very least, no one can say I sat back and watched while they destroyed science.

aclu.org

Researchers Challenge NIH Screening of Grants for Disfavored Viewpoints | American Civil Liberties Union

Class action lawsuit seeks to stop censorship and termination of federally funded scientific research

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Joey Heffner @jpheffne.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

We are growing the team! Currently recruiting a PhD student (Fall 2027 start, portal opens mid-Sep) and hiring a lab manager. Inquiries from postdocs, prospective PhD students, and research assistants are all welcome. Apply now! www.heffner-lab.com/join

heffner-lab.com

People | Join the ECC Lab — Emotions, Computation, and Choice Lab

Learn more about available positions and how to join the Emotions, Computation, and Choice Lab at Stanford University.

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Marlene Berke @marleneberke.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Do non-human primates have theory of mind? My new paper takes a new computational approach to this classic question. We implemented verbal theories of primates' mental representations as computational models. These models completed classic visual perspective-taking tasks.

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Jae-Young Son @jaeyoungson.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Joey is an incredible scientist and mentor — if you’re interested in studying emotion & social cognition as a lab manager, grad student, or postdoc, this is an amazing opportunity!!

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Joey Heffner @jpheffne.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

SO excited to share that I'll be joining Stanford University as an Assistant Professor in Psychology starting September 2027!! I’m launching the Emotions, Computation, and Choice Lab, where we investigate how emotions guide social cognition and behavior. www.heffner-lab.com

heffner-lab.com

Emotions, Computation, and Choice Lab

Explore research on how emotions influence social cognition, decision-making, and AI interactions at the Emotions, Computation, and Choice Lab at Stanford University. Join us to study emotions and beh...

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mahwishkittur.bsky.social @mahwishkittur.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

After years of analyzing thousands of drawings from hundreds of adults and children, I am excited to share my first ever paper (w/ @samiyousif.bsky.social )! Using a simple drawing task, we show how topological structure is represented in the mind and its importance in spatial memory.

elifesciences.org

Topological structure in human spatial representation revealed through drawing

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Sepehr Razavi @srazavi.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The Social Computation and Representation Lab talk series is back tomorrow! And no better way to start the new academic year than by following @setayeshradkani.bsky.social 's talk as she weaves together two complementary strands of her investigations into social cognition.

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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I fear that placing too much emphasis on a specific interpretation of dimensionality, or treating dimensionality as an end-all quantification of some aspect of neural computation, may lead us down the wrong path, writes @mattperich.bsky.social. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/neural-dynam...

thetransmitter.org

Dimensionality—neuroscience’s red herring?

Placing too much emphasis on a specific interpretation of dimensionality may lead neuroscience down the wrong path.

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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.

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Natalia (娜塔莉) @wrycritic.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

This is grim.

Share female at different points on the academic career ladder for selected years, split by broad field. Years selected basedon data availability (earliest year for college graduates: 1993; latest for faculty: 2004) and reasonable time lags. Source: Digest ofEducation Statistics, Survey of Earned Doctorates

Earth Sciences below parity threshold in all categories

(PDF) Women in Academia: Why and where does the pipeline leak, and how can we fix it?. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373548083_Women_in_academia_Why_and_where_does_the_pipeline_leak_and_how_can_we_fix_it [accessed Sep 08 2026].

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Sabine Krabbe @sabinekrabbe.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Amygdala dopamine is often studied in response to external rewards or threats. But what happens during self-initiated exploration? Our new preprint suggests a broader role: a state-dependent salience signal linking exploration and associative learning. 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

Basolateral amygdala dopamine signals behavioural salience across exploration and learning

Animals must balance exploration with threat avoidance, yet how neuromodulatory signals shape information-seeking states remains unclear. Using fibre photometry recordings in the basolateral amygdala ...

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Anne Billot, PhD @annebillot.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

1/ [PREPRINT] How is the lateral PFC organized to support cognition? Using precision fMRI, we show adjacent PFC regions support opposing functions, predicted by embedding in distinct networks across 3 cohorts (N=37). This could inform TMS treatment targets. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

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Enny van Beest @ennyvb.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Textbook: tracking position during navigation is primarily the job of the hippocampus. Recent findings suggest a more complicated story. Recording >20k neurons brainwide, we indeed find spatial representations in every region! With @kenneth-harris.bsky.social and @carandinilab.net

Brainwide representations of a virtual corridor

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Jieyu Zheng @jieyusz.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

How fast can mice learn complex mazes? With @mameister4.bsky.social we reveal memory, generalization, latent learning, and remote credit assignment of mice in the Manhattan Maze. Do mice born without a cortex or hippocampus have them too? Check it out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

Rapid spatial cognition in mice, with and without neocortex and hippocampus

Rapid learning, memory, and generalization are often attributed to circuits of the neocortex and hippocampus, but their specific role remains unclear. To examine these cognitive abilities together in ...

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Alisa Loosen @alisaloosen.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

📣 Out now in Translational Psychiatry 📣 We show a metacognitive paradox in OCD: patients report persistently lower confidence than controls at comparable accuracy, yet their confidence is more sensitive to feedback and tracks a Bayesian observer more closely. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵👇

nature.com

The metacognitive paradox of OCD: confidence is globally reduced but shows increased sensitivity to local evidence - Translational Psychiatry

Translational Psychiatry - The metacognitive paradox of OCD: confidence is globally reduced but shows increased sensitivity to local evidence

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

How do we prevent memories from competing to guide attention? More distinct hippocampal representations for competing memories are linked to precise preparatory coding in visual cortex & more accurate eye movements to target locations. Thrilled to share this work by the incomparable Serra Favila!

nature.com

Hippocampal mechanisms underlying the resolution of competition in memory and perception - Nature Communications

Memory and perception both require selecting behaviorally relevant information. Here, the authors show that more distinct hippocampal memories are linked to precise anticipatory signals in visual cort...

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 05/09/2026

Ok here we go: It DOES look like a major purpose of this NIH funding transfer to NIH is to circumvent NIH’s peer review processes so political appointees can have control. Check out the redacted agreement @maxkozlov.bsky.social released: 1/

AGENCY-AGREEMENT-NIH-AND-DOW-REDACTED v
Q
Federal departments, agencies, and offices with respect to the identification of additional priority virus families and other viral pathogens with a significant potential to cause a pandemic" (42
U.S.C. § 285f-5(e)(1)).
Through this agreement, NIH will leverage OASW ND-CBD's procurement, grants, and funding network to allow for critical basic science
I, related research pathways, and basic research to
support the translation and advanced development of medical countermeasures.

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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

The superposition of these two studies — both incredible — reflect a snapshot of "one big thing" systems neuroscience has yet to resolve. In mice: 1. Task-related signals are everywhere. 2. Absent large swaths of "everywhere," suprisingly sophisticated learning & behavior remains.

Post by Enny van Beest, "Brainwide representation of navigation"

Post by Jieyu Zheng, "How fast can mice learn complex mazes?"

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Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

This is exactly the original use case and whole raison d'être for computational models of minds and brains, and if that is what it all circles back to, I will be extremely happy.

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Atsushi Kikumoto @kikumotoatsushi.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I'm recruiting a PhD student for Fall 2027 at the University of Maryland — Cognitive Flexibility Dynamics Lab, studying cognitive control via brain recording (M/EEG, MRI), stimulation (TUS), and computational modeling. Please email me: cfd-lab.com/join

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Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I am absolutely sick about this. Sick.

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Emma Curtis @emmacurtis.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Throwing trans kids under the bus won’t win you an election. It will, however, get you absolutely obliterated in an otherwise winnable race against an 80-year-old incumbent. @sethmoulton.bsky.social, don’t let the door hit you on the way out 👋

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Ben Recht @beenwrekt.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The overreaction to this Hugging Face thing is driving me nuts. Come flay me for being wrong but... 1/x

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Victoria Bosch @initself.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Are brains and artificial neural networks converging onto universal representations? There is a seductive idea making the rounds in NeuroAI / machine learning: train systems well enough, and they all converge on the same representation of reality (i.e. a unique world model). We have thoughts™ 1/n

cell.com

The Umwelt Representation Hypothesis: rethinking Universality

Recent studies reveal striking representational alignment between artificial neural networks (ANNs) and biological brains, leading to proposals that all sufficiently capable systems converge on univer...

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

The situation in Haiti is terrifying. On Sunday, 150 gunmen swept down on a town to kill, rape, loot, and burn. 22 people were executed in a churchyard. 52 were taken hostage. Stephen Miller mockingly says Haiti is safe and ICE just sent its second deportation flight this month; with kids on board.

They arrived in silence, under cover of darkness, heavily armed as they surrounded the town and moved through Kenscoff’s rugged terrain and towering forests in the mountains above the Haitian capital. Numbering around 150, the gunmen swept through several locations as they made their way toward the center of the town, opening fire on resident who tried to flee. At least 13 people were shot and killed as the gunmen ran through downtown, according to an account by the United Nations human rights office. As more than 50 others sought refuge in L’Arche de la Nouvelle Alliance, a Protestant church that had been sheltering people already displaced by the violence, the gunmen pursued them. When they arrive, they forced residents from the church and executed 22 of them in its courtyard. A dozen others were killed behind the sanctuary. The attackers didn’t just stop there. Before withdrawing from downtown, an area encompassing City Hall and a Haiti National Police substation, they abducted at least 52 people, including a mother and her five children, as well as another mother and her infant. Children and elderly who could not run were killed inside their homes. Others were burned alive after gunmen set at least a dozen houses on fire, witnesses told the National Human Rights Defense Network. The attackers also shot horses and other livestock inside the rural enclave.

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Imaging Neuroscience @imagingneurosci.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Selina Abel, Hilary Richardson, et al: Neural and behavioural correlates of theory of mind reasoning in five-year-old children born preterm doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

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Harrison Ritz @hritz.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Our task-switching paper is now out at Current Biology! www.cell.com/current-biol... We find that that our brains reset to a task-neutral state between trials, providing flexibility when the upcoming task is uncertain. RNNs also learn this strategy, but only when trained to switch tasks.

schematic of how a brain might reset to a neutral state between trials

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Alisa Bokulich @alisabokulich.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

"Whenever researchers decide...what questions to ask, which instruments...to use, what stat methods to apply & how to interpret results, they are engaging in philosophical reasoning...Understood in this light, philosophy is an ally to science & both are made stronger by their interaction" #philsci 🧪

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Bradley P. Moss @bradmossesq.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

These people had protected status. They lived here legally. They worked, they paid taxes. They made lives. Raised families. Now we’ve dehumanized them. Ripped away that protection and told them to get out. This is a stain on the soul of this Nation.

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Sev Harootonian @harootonian.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

My main PhD paper is finally out in Nature Human Behaviour! The question: what cognitive strategies do people use when they teach, and can we nudge them toward a better one? Work with my PhD mentors @yaelniv.bsky.social, @markkho.bsky.social and @cocoscilab.bsky.social. 1/5

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 15/08/2026

Absolutely vile framing from the @nytimes.com. Why doesn’t this leave behind hard questions for the media that hounded him? Or the global right-wing that gleefully turned a local matter into an international incident?

“Professor’s Death Leaves Behind Hard Questions for Cambridge on Race and Hiring”

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Andrew Lampinen @lampinen.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

New position piece w/ @tylerbonnen.bsky.social out now in COBS! We suggest that data augmentation is a useful framework for understanding hippocampal contributions to generalization, and offers a path towards more precise modeling: 1/

Data augmentation as a framework for modeling hippocampal contributions to generalization

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Soroush Mirjalili @soroushmirjalili.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

🧠🚨 How can we measure the latent cognitive processes that work together during complex behavior? In our new Perspective, we propose cross-domain transfer: learning a neural signature of a cognitive process in one task and using it to track that process in another. 🧵 osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.io

OSF

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Jae-Young Son @jaeyoungson.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

It was never my intention to stay in this department for the last ten(?!) years, but it’s really a testament to how much I’ve enjoyed being trained here If you value interdisciplinary research and a community where you can have reliably good intellectual conversations, consider applying!

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