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Jesse Geerts

@jessegeerts.bsky.social
228 followers 167 following 51 posts

Cognitive neuroscientist and AI researcher

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Reposted by Jesse Geerts
Neil Burgess @neilburgess10.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Ever wondered how the hippocampal cognitive map is read-out? @changmin-yu.bsky.social @zilong-ji.bsky.social with Jake & John, show that, during navigation, theta sweeps indicate remembered goal-directions (cf. current/next movements or perceptual targets) 1/2 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Decoded locations from place cell firing sweep towards a remembered goal location during each theta cycle irrespective of the current movement or head direction
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Jesse Geerts @jessegeerts.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
I am honoured to share that I have been selected as a Thinking About Thinking Fellow for 2026.
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Botos Csabi @botoscsabi.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Jeee 🐦‍⬛ I am very proud of our joint effort with @sreejan.bsky.social on the project "Reason to Play" LRMs show human-like rule discovery, and their hidden states predict human brain activity during gameplay 10x better than previous methods Interactive demo + paper: botcs.github.io/reason-to-pl...
botcs.github.io
Reason to Play - Behavioral and Brain Alignment
32 fMRI-scanned humans and 8 frontier open weight LLMs play ARC-AGI like games with no rules given. The reasoning models match the human learning trajectories and their hidden states predict human bra...
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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
On the latest episode, @braininspired.bsky.social with @juangallego.bsky.social about the wealth of evidence that supports the view that neural manifolds are real and useful, even if they may not completely solve the age-old mind-body problem. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/brain-inspir...
thetransmitter.org
Juan Gallego on manifolds and populations of neurons
A wealth of evidence supports the view that neural manifolds are real and useful, even if they may not solve the age-old mind-body problem.
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Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience @kingsioppn.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
How do we know that things we do will have the outcomes we expect? We chat to @tobywise.bsky.social about his research into the relationship between compulsivity and uncertainty. Go give it a listen! #BrainAwarenessWeek open.spotify.com/episode/2hyj...
open.spotify.com
How is compulsivity related to uncertainty?
Inside Neuroscience · Episode
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Ida Momennejad @neuroai.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
This looks great! Congrats team!
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Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Wow, awesome to see this work!
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Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Wonderful work by @weijiazh.bsky.social at #Cosyne2026, who beautifully navigated a busy poster session yesterday!
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 14/03/2026
My travel to Cosyne was barred by the Trump admin, so I'm here on my personal dime. I care about the COSYNE community, I committed to co-chairing. And I always learn here. But the worst part about this travel ban is my lab colleagues— students and fellows—couldn't come. /1
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Jesse Geerts @jessegeerts.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
Excited to be at #COSYNE2026 ! I’m presenting our recent preprint with Francesca Greenstreet, @juangallego.bsky.social an and @clopathlab.bsky.social in today’s poster session [3-026] www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
I have just arrived at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social ! During my flight, as I thought about opening remarks (and had a glass of wine), I got to reflect on why I love neuroscience. Maybe other folks are doing the same and would like to read or add, so I thought I'd do something unusual and share!
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UCL NeuroAI @ucl-neuroai.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
We are excited to have Dr. Tim Kietzmann from Osnabrück University for our next seminar! This will be an in-person plus online seminar! 🗓️Wed 11 March 2026 ⏰2-3pm GMT Talk title: NeuroAI - the synergy between machine learning and neuroscience Registration: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ucl-neuroa...
eventbrite.co.uk
UCL NeuroAI Talk Series
A series of NeuroAI themed talks organised by the UCL NeuroAI community. Talks will continue on a monthly basis.
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Jaeeon Lee @jel0624.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
🚨🚨New Preprint Alert!🚨🚨 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Animal learning is painfully slow (at least initially). Yet, well trained animals can learn very fast, sometimes displaying few-shot inference. How does this transition occur?
biorxiv.org
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Athena Akrami @athenaakrami.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
Thrilled to finally share this work! 🧠🔊 Using a new reinforcement-free task we show mice (like humans) extract abstract structure from sound (unsupervised) & dCA1 is causally required by building factorised, orthogonal subspaces of abstract rules. Led by Dammy Onih! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Jesse Geerts @jessegeerts.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
Code for our multi-region motor learning model is now available on GitHub! github.com/jessegeerts/...
github.com
GitHub - jessegeerts/action-embedding: Action embeddings for RL - model of motor adaptation and generalization
Action embeddings for RL - model of motor adaptation and generalization - jessegeerts/action-embedding
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Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
Updated work from @jessegeerts.bsky.social extending his results on transitive inference in transformers (including LLMs!) updated paper: arxiv.org/abs/2506.04289 bleeprint (what are we calling these?) below ⬇️
arxiv.org
Relational reasoning and inductive bias in transformers and large language models
Transformer-based models have demonstrated remarkable reasoning abilities, but the mechanisms underlying relational reasoning remain poorly understood. We investigate how transformers perform \textit{...
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Jesse Geerts @jessegeerts.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
Update on this work! We've extended our transitive inference study to large language models 🧵
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Masahiro Nakano @masahironakano.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
I’m excited to share my first PhD preprint!🎉 We studied how interactions between medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) and hippocampus shape theta sequences during navigation, and asked whether some “planning-like” patterns in hippocampus could arise from upstream MEC dynamics. (1/8)
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Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world: gershmanlab.com/textbook.html It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class. My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.
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Juan Gallego @juangallego.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
New paper led by wonder postdocs Francesca Greenstreet and @jessegeerts.bsky.social and @clopathlab.bsky.social trying to understand why –in the "what for" sense– there are multiple motor learning systems –supervised and RL-based– in the brain. Check out Jesse's 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Claudia Clopath Lab @clopathlab.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
Check out our new work on motor learning across multiple brain regions!
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Jesse Geerts @jessegeerts.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
🧠 New year, new preprint! Why does motor learning involve multiple brain regions? We propose that the cortico-cerebellar system learns a "map" of actions where similar movements are nearby, while basal ganglia do RL in this simplified space. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Erin Grant @eringrant.me · 06/12/2025
Thrilled to start 2026 as faculty in Psych & CS @ualberta.bsky.social + Amii.ca Fellow! 🥳 Recruiting students to develop theories of cognition in natural & artificial systems 🤖💭🧠. Find me at #NeurIPS2025 workshops (speaking coginterp.github.io/neurips2025 & organising @dataonbrainmind.bsky.social)
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Andrew Lampinen @lampinen.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
What aspects of human knowledge do vision models like CLIP fail to capture, and how can we improve them? We suggest models miss key global organization; aligning them makes them more robust. Check out LukasMuttenthaler's work, finally out (in Nature!?) www.nature.com/articles/s41... + our blog! 1/3
nature.com
Aligning machine and human visual representations across abstraction levels - Nature
Aligning foundation models with human judgments enables them to more accurately approximate human behaviour and uncertainty across various levels of visual abstraction, while additionally improving th...
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Jesse Geerts @jessegeerts.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
Excited to share that the full programme for the 2025 UCL NeuroAI Annual Conference is now live! 🧠🤖 @ucl-neuroai.bsky.social Spaces are limited, so register soon: lnkd.in/ehiKrSaf Full programme here: lnkd.in/e8cV3mAZ
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Sainsbury Wellcome Centre @sainsburywellcome.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
We are delighted to support the 2025 @ucl-neurodomain.bsky.social NeuroAI Annual Conference. Join experts in neuroscience, AI, machine learning, and related fields on Wednesday 5 November 2025 at @uclchildhealth.bsky.social Details and registration: www.ucl.ac.uk/event-ticket...
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 14/10/2025
Looks like a great conference---
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Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
Really interesting work by Bakhurin and colleagues challenging the reward prediction error hypothesis of dopamine: www.nature.com/articles/s41... I love this figure which both echoes and undermines the famous figure from Schultz et al. (1997).
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Jesse Geerts @jessegeerts.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
Remember to submit an abstract to UCL NeuroAI 2025 by Wednesday! 🧠🤖 This will be a great opportunity to present your work to the local community, and we have a fantastic line-up of keynote speakers: @ucl-neuroai.bsky.social @sainsburywellcome.bsky.social
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Jesse Geerts @jessegeerts.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
Remember to submit an abstract to UCL NeuroAI 2025 by Wednesday! 🧠🤖 This will be a great opportunity to present your work to the local community, and we have a fantastic line-up of keynote speakers: @ucl-neuroai.bsky.social @sainsburywellcome.bsky.social
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Weijia Z @weijiazh.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
🚀 New Preprint from our team: comparing place cells across species! Disentangling methods from biology provides a roadmap for cross-species insights into spatial coding 🌍 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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UCL NeuroAI @ucl-neuroai.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Submission deadline extended! Submit your poster or lightning talk abstract by Wednesday 15th October 2025, 12:00pm
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UCL NeuroAI @ucl-neuroai.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
📢 We are very happy to announce the 2025 @ucl.ac.uk #NeuroAI Annual Conference! Join us on Wed 5 November 2025 at @uclchildhealth.bsky.social Details and registration: www.ucl.ac.uk/event-ticket... Poster and lightning talks submissions are now open, up to 8th Oct. @ucl-neurodomain.bsky.social
ucl.ac.uk
UCL Event Ticketing
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Kris Jensen @kristorpjensen.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
I’m super excited to finally put my recent work with @behrenstimb.bsky.social on bioRxiv, where we develop a new mechanistic theory of how PFC structures adaptive behaviour using attractor dynamics in space and time! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Andrej Bicanski @andrejbicanski.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
Dear colleagues, we have an open PhD position in computational neuroscience - spatial memory models and intracranial recordings - fully funded. Re-advertised, candidates are ideally available in the near future. A collab. with 4 labs. Apply here: tinyurl.com/yc84ctap
tinyurl.com
PhD position or a Doctoral Candidate in computational neuroscience. (m/f/d) | Karriereportal Max-Planck-Institut für Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften
PhD position or a Doctoral Candidate in computational neuroscience. (m/f/d) | Karriereportal Max-Planck-Institut für Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften
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Neuroverse @neuroversepod.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Check out our latest episode on habit formation with DrFrancesca Greenstreet ✅📝 We talk about how habits are made how they may not require reward-based learning … 🎧 open.spotify.com/episode/1gZI...
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Daniel Wurgaft @danielwurgaft.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
🚨New paper! We know models learn distinct in-context learning strategies, but *why*? Why generalize instead of memorize to lower loss? And why is generalization transient? Our work explains this & *predicts Transformer behavior throughout training* without its weights! 🧵 1/
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Ching Fang @chingfang.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
Humans and animals can rapidly learn in new environments. What computations support this? We study the mechanisms of in-context reinforcement learning in transformers, and propose how episodic memory can support rapid learning. Work w/ @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social : arxiv.org/abs/2506.19686
arxiv.org
From memories to maps: Mechanisms of in context reinforcement learning in transformers
Humans and animals show remarkable learning efficiency, adapting to new environments with minimal experience. This capability is not well captured by standard reinforcement learning algorithms that re...
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Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
New work on relational reasoning in transformers! TLDR: Inductive biases of In-Weight and In-Context Learning in transformers are really different for relational reasoning, and pretraining can make a big difference for in-context. Check out @jessegeerts.bsky.social's thread for more!
arxiv.org
Relational reasoning and inductive bias in transformers trained on a transitive inference task
Transformer-based models have demonstrated remarkable reasoning abilities, but the mechanisms underlying relational reasoning in different learning regimes remain poorly understood. In this work, we i...
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Sainsbury Wellcome Centre @sainsburywellcome.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
‘Some dopamine neurons signal default behaviors to reinforce habits’ SWC research features in @thetransmitter.bsky.social ⬇️ www.thetransmitter.org/neurobiology...
thetransmitter.org
Dopamine neurons signal default behavior to reinforce habits
Movement-sensing neurons in the striatum influence a mouse’s choice of action by favoring routine behaviors.
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Jesse Geerts @jessegeerts.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
This is a nice paper which applies and refines some of the ideas we put forward in our Psych Review paper. Our model combined multiple Successor Representations which it switches between based on uncertainty. Jess's model adds reward outcomes to this process and captures splitter cells and more!
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Andrew MacAskill @macaskillaf.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
Congrats to the fantastic Jess P for her new paper! She compared how feature Vs outcome focussed agents learn to solve contextual inference problems. She found that you need a balance of both to learn these tasks - and that this mix recapitulates pfc and hippocampal activity in rodent tasks!
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Jesse Geerts @jessegeerts.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
🧠 How do transformers learn relational reasoning? We trained small transformers on transitive inference (if A>B and B>C, then A>C) and discovered striking differences between learning paradigms. Our latest work reveals when and why AI systems generalize beyond training data 🤖
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Jesse Geerts @jessegeerts.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
Excited to see this work out! Check it out for a novel view on habit learning and the computational role of dopamine
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
Impressive study in @nature from my colleague Marcus Stephenson-Jones at UCL in the @sainsburywellcome.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Dopaminergic action prediction errors serve as a value-free teaching signal - Nature
Dopaminergic action prediction error signals are used by mice as a value-free teaching signal to reinforce stable sound–action associations in the tail of the striatum.
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