iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I wish it was more than just a metaphor... I'd love some of that muscle!!!

James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Huge thanks to the very best supervisors 🙏🏻🎉 I am Cian's biggest admirer and am so grateful for all his support, encouragement and insight, as well as John and Conor's @conjh.bsky.social. Doing a PhD and science with them has been one of the best experiences, and I aspire to be like them!

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Eclipse trial run for tomorrow?

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Just back from AREADNE, a conference on the Encoding and Decoding of Neural Ensembles, in Milos, Greece. It was an incredible week of sea, sun, and science. It emphasised to me again that science isn't just the methods, analyses, or results. It's the sharing, talking, listening, and being inspired.

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Great to meet you too Mark, and what a fantastic talk you gave! So amazing to see all the work you're doing at so many levels. Hopefully see you again!

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Appreciation post for my incredible supervisor Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social. Such an inspiration & wonderful mentor as Supervisor & School Research Director. He organised a brilliant ISRC Discovery Day today @ulsteruni.bsky.social, showcasing the breadth & depth of our research.

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Beautiful beaches of Donegal | Tránna áille Dhún na nGall Dooey Carrickfinn Silver Strand Murvagh

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

A 𝙝𝙪𝙜𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙠𝙨 to my supervisors & co-authors @cianodonnell.bsky.social , John Wade & @conjh.bsky.social ! We are excited for what these principles imply both for understanding the brain & for designing more robust AI.

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗲-𝗼𝗳𝗳: The efficiency & robustness comes with a price. We found biological wiring leads to lower-dimensional, less expressive dynamics.

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

We find that neuron self-recurrency is a key feature which stabilises spectral properties & dynamics, inducing robustness to node loss & hyperparameter variation.

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

𝗥𝗼𝗯𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀: CoNNs also proved to be significantly more resilient to: - node loss, maintaining performance & spectral radius under pruning longer than conventional random networks - parameter perturbation, where CoNNs better maintained critical dynamics & smoother dynamical transitions.

Relative spectral radius under random pruning

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Crucially, we found that specific structural features (like self-loops, clustering, and node degree) correlated with task engagement, meaning the network's physical structure directly shapes how neurons share the workload!

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

𝗘𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆: We found that CoNNs generally achieved comparable task performance to classic Echo State Networks, but with lower “wiring costs” (smaller weights) & lower “energy demands” (reduced neural activity). CoNNs also showed more specialised engagement (smaller subsets of contributing neurons).

Participation ratios of neural engagement distributions

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Really excited to share a new preprint! 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗼 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘆 𝗿𝗼𝗯𝘂𝘀𝘁 & 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗯𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘀𝗲? We explore how! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We built Connectome-based Neural Networks (CoNNs) using Drosophila wiring (larva&adult) & compared with random networks with same sparsity.

Constructing connectome-based neural networks

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Rick Betzel @richardfbetzel.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Excited to read this! Non-random brain connectome wiring enables robust and efficient neural network function under high sparsity www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Non-random brain connectome wiring enables robust and efficient neural network function under high sparsity www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…

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Paul Anastasiades @panastasiades.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

New preprint from the lab on synapse development in the nascent neocortical hierarchy! Using mice that label MAGUK proteins developed by Seth Grant we find key differences in the laminar maturation of association and sensory motor cortices, including delayed, cortex-wide maturation of L1 synapses.

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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Region- and layer-specific glutamatergic synapse development in the nascent cortical hierarchy www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

Will this be available in the UK or EU? :)

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Lovely time today at the 2nd All-Ireland Computational Neuroscience Symposium at Queens U Belfast. It's a small but growing community on the island. imo the talks were all genuinely great and I'm really excited for the future Round 3 back in Dublin next August apparently if anyone wants to join! ☘️🧠

Photo of James McAllister from Ulster University giving a presentation on his work on brain-inspired reservoir computing

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

This is so fab! What a brilliant resource, thanks John!

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

@camneuro.bsky.social our amazing PhD student James McAllister is giving a talk at 2pm in CBL on drosophila-larva connectome-based recurrent neural networks talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/2...

talks.cam.ac.uk

talks.cam : Connectome-based Echo State Networks

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Amazing, thank you so much! And thanks for such an awesome network tool.

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

I was using graph-tool (it's fabulous btw!) in Colab a month or so ago and it worked perfectly, but it now is complaining at the part "from graph_tool.all import *" saying "ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'graph_tool'"...is there something that hasn't yet been updated in Colab? Thanks!

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

This is a great write-up of a brilliant paper! :)

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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

Delighted @jajmca.bsky.social's abstract was accepted for COSYNE 2025, for his work on linking neural circuit structure to function via drosophila-connectome-based reservoir computing. With @conjh.bsky.social, John Wade and myself.

Schematic diagram of reservoir computing neural network, with drosophila larva connectome overlaid as reservoir connectivity.

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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

I wouldn't have thought to work out the probability (either as a frequentist or Bayesian) of being Rick rolled by the first footnote!! 😂

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