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Konrad Kording

@kordinglab.bsky.social
15K followers 580 following 1.3K posts

@Penn Prof, deep learning, brains, #causality, rigor, neuromatch.io, Transdisciplinary optimist, Dad, Loves outdoors, 🦖 , c4r.io

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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Why on earth did we, as a field, allow the word "agent" to be used the way it currently is?
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Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I’m beyond honoured to be named a 2026 @schmidtsciences.bsky.social Polymath. With US$2.5 million over five years, I’ll be able to pursue an interdisciplinary project to combine quantitative and qualitative data to better capture human neurodiversity. 🧠📈 www.schmidtsciences.org/2026-polymat...
schmidtsciences.org
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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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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
As it is a new term, try out (free) planyourscience.com which helps make sure that scientific projects end up awesome.
planyourscience.com
Scientific Paper Planner - AI-Powered Research Planning
Structure your scientific research with AI-powered guidance. From hypothesis to methodology, plan your research paper with intelligent mentoring.
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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
I wrote a super dynamic AI/LLM explainer webpage. Not public yet (don't yet know if it would bankrupt me and having some other constraints). Anyone willing to give it a try and give me some feedback? Mostly looking for feedback from the non-experts. Chat me if interested.
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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Cool cool. Let’s not obsess about dimensionality. Good motto in a 1/f world!
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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
This is cool. But why don't people know how to pour coffee? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... the paper asks how to pour a coffee and the answer is "not like this!"
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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Using AI in neuroscience labs. Great article at @thetransmitter.bsky.social by @nicoschuck.bsky.social. www.thetransmitter.org/artificial-i...
thetransmitter.org
How, when and why to use agentic AI in our neuroscience labs
With agentic AI’s rapid infiltration into science, researchers need to develop AI use policies and practices.
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Peter Tennant @pwgtennant.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Does the new shingles vaccine (Shingrix) protect against cardiovascular disease (CVD)? Yes, according to a new 'natural experiment' study in @natmed.nature.com. But the truth is sadly far less convincing! Pull up a chair and let's examine another peer review failure in a Nature journal. 1/10 🧵
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Community for Rigor @comm4rigor.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
🎉 We are excited to welcome Katie Corker as a featured speaker at C4R26! 💬 "Strengthening Rigor Through Open Research and Evaluation" 📅 September 29, 11:30 am ET 📍 Philadelphia, PA 🎟️ Free with RSVP 🔗 link in bio #Preprints #OpenScience #Science
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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Thread. I have yet to see a proper explanation of how LLMs actually work that is targeted to an informed general audience. So here is an explainer that I put together along with Tim @countzerozzz (inspired by @CIFAR_News LMB discussions).
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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Hiring for research scientists in expansion chemistry and optical physiology at mindspan.org with @eboyden3.bsky.social, Yongxin Zhao, Xue Han. We will build tools to analyze the human brain. We are into compiling arxiv.org/abs/2603.25713. We are into cutting edge technology.
mindspan.org
Mindspan Institute
A non-profit creating and applying tools to characterize the molecules and wiring of the human brain, as well as to interpret how they contribute to brain functions and dysfunctions, openly sharing to...
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Community for Rigor @comm4rigor.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Meet our C4R26 speakers 👋 🔬 @kordinglab.bsky.social 🧠 Simine Vazire 📚️ @katiecorker.bsky.social 🌎️ Dimitris Boufidis We hope you'll join us in Philadelphia! 📅 September 28-30, 2026 📍 Philadelphia, PA 🎟️ Free with RSVP 🔗 c4r.io/conference #C4R26 #AcademicResearch #ScienceCommunity
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Tony Zador @tonyzador.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
A companion piece to @kordinglab.bsky.social provocative "Could a neuroscientist understand a microprocessor? "
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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Great thinking re genetic specification of nervous systems.
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The Viking (Gunnar Blohm) @gunnarblohm.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
My first attempt at focaccia art... (Don't judge 🙃) I used this recipe and it turned out delicious! alexandracooks.com/2018/03/02/o...
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Clément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 01/08/2026
"We're all worried," as what it means to do research (in my field, Theoretical CS) seems to be shifting, and shifting fast. What to do? Senior researchers must lead by example, knowing that not everything will pan out. What I'm suggesting below may not work everywhere, but here's my own advice: 1/
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Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Super cool paper here, showing that the cerebellum has a credit assignment mechanism solving the weight transport problem and giving every P-cell the right error signal! But, could the neocortex be the same? Could it possibly be hard-wired like this? I suspect not... Mystery to solve! 🧠📈 🧪
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Reza Shadmehr @rezashadmehr.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
If an action results in error, each neuron requires an individualized teaching signal that guides change in its output. This is the credit assignment problem of learning. Are there neurons in the brain that can compute such a sophisticated teaching signal? Yes. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Climbing fibers encode the gradient of a loss function for the cerebellum
Neurons in the brain are often many synapses away from motoneurons, yet if a movement results in error, each distant neuron needs a teacher that considers its specific contribution to production of th...
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Turan Orujlu @turanorujlu.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
UAI 2026 paper: A genetic perturbation can change the connectome, a new policy can rewire economic links between firms. In each case, interventions change the graph itself which standard SCMs treat as fixed. We tackle this in Partially Observed Structural Causal Models (POSCMs).
Expanded DAG for a 3-node POSCM under ordered generation. An exogenous ordering τ feeds context variables β₁, β₂, β₃; each βᵢ generates adjacency variables A_ji, which gate the value channels between endogenous variables V₁, V₂, V₃ and also feed the mechanism variables f₁, f₂, f₃. Phase I covers structure and context generation; Phase II covers mechanism assignment and value generation.
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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
I think this is importantly work bringing causality closer to reality.
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Timothy O'Leary @timothyoleary.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
I think the difficulty of understanding feedback loops underlies many big debates in science: Origin of life: "genes first" vs "metabolism first" (neither, it's a feedback loop) Development: "nature vs nurture" (neither, it's a feedback loop) Neuroscience: "brain vs behaviour" (you guessed it!)
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Community for Rigor @comm4rigor.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Registration is now open for C4R26 🎉 Join us Sep 28 to 30, 2026 in Philadelphia for a free conference dedicated to scientific rigor, practical research skills, methodology workshops, and building better science together. Register at c4r.io/conference #ScientificRigor #ResearchTraining
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Joshua Glaser @joshuaiglaser.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Excited to share this work, led by Andrew Zimnik and Sherry An, from @mchurchland.bsky.social and my labs! www.cell.com/neuron/fullt... 1/2
cell.com
Sparse component analysis: A method that uncovers separable computations within neural population activity
Zimnik et al. provide a new, interpretable, unsupervised dimensionality approach for neural population activity. Their approach, sparse component analysis (SCA), reveals the latent factors correspondi...
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Santa Fe Institute @sfiscience.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Last fall, SFI's John Krakauer was named director of the Centre for Restorative Neurotechnology (CRN) at Lisbon's Champalimaud Foundation, a center he helped create. Krakauer has been connected to Champalimaud for more than a decade, first as a visiting scientist at its Centre for the Unknown.
santafe.edu
John Krakauer named director of Champalimaud's Centre for Restorative Neurotechnology
Last fall, SFI External Professor John Krakauer was named director of the Centre for Restorative Neurotechnology (CRN) — a center he helped create — at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon. He takes ...
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Mark Thornton @markthornton.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Now in press at Cortex! "False discovery rate correction promotes confounded neuroimaging designs" Paper 🔓: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Effect of confound mass on true positive rates under test-wise FDR correction in completely arbitrary data. Confound mass represents how large a confound is in terms of the product of the number of tests it is present in, and its mean effect size across these tests. Results are shown at differing combinations of true effect size, number of tests with true (i.e., non-confound) effects, and sample size. Inflated surface maps of meta-analytic z-statistics from Neurosynth for low-level confounds (top) and high-level cognitive tasks (bottom). Red reflects positive activations, blue reflects negative (de)activations, and darker colors indicate larger z-statistics. Maps are thresholded at |z| = 1 for visualization purposes.The difference in integrated true positive rate between parcel-wise FDR and parcel-wise FWER (y-axis) is plotted as a function of confound effect size. Each point represents 1 out of 5000 studies simulated for each combination of task and confound. Smoothed loess lines are used to better show the overall trends.Effect of FDR-based publication bias on observed confound effects sizes. Simulated meta-analytic confound effect sizes are visualized through violin plots for each combination of task effect and confound effect examined in the neural data simulations. Meta-analyses featuring publication bias (orange) substantially inflate these effect size estimates in all cases, relative to meta-analyses featuring no publication bias (blue). Moreover, this bias was present – and in most cases larger – in the subset of studies that were included in the meta-analysis specifically when the publication bias was based on FDR instead of FWER integrated true positive rates (green).
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Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
For a long time I felt like there was a hesitation in neuroscience to ascribe anything like a planning function to the various "replay" events we see in the hippocampus, but I think this is rapidly changing. Here's another new entry in human epilepsy patients: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧠📈 🧪
nature.com
Human hippocampal ripples coordinate planning sequences and compositional representations in neocortex - Nature Neuroscience
Human hippocampal ripples and replay interact with the prefrontal cortex to update mental representations online, letting the brain compositionally combine familiar elements in new ways for flexible p...
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Sean Escola @seanescola.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Nobody spells it out like @kordinglab.bsky.social. In this latest @juanbenetpodcast.bsky.social episode, Konrad discusses why we need “compilers” to translate molecularly annotated connectomes into neural dynamics – generating data we could use to build better AI. www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHQf...
youtube.com
The Power of a Single Neuron and a Path to Simulating the Brain | Dr. Konrad Kording
YouTube video by Juan Benet Podcast
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Protocol Labs @protocollabs.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Artificial neurons sum their inputs to produce an output. Real neurons are considerably more complicated. Full conversation with Konrad Kording (@kordinglab.bsky.social) on the @juanbenet.bsky.social Podcast >>> youtu.be/FHQfmJEpRmU
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Protocol Labs @protocollabs.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
"From evolution's perspective, we're clearly breaking out of the sandbox." Konrad Kording’s question: If humans escaped evolution’s objectives, should we worry about AI escaping ours? Full conversation with @kordinglab.bsky.social on the @juanbenet.bsky.social Podcast >>> youtu.be/FHQfmJEpRmU
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Slightly surprised that @kordinglab.bsky.social are still printing their simulations out on paper to be honest.
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Protocol Labs @protocollabs.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
“Our simulations are barely worth the papers we print them on.” @kordinglab.bsky.social on the tiny worm with just 300 neurons that scientists still can't simulate — even with every connection mapped. Full conversation on the @juanbenet.bsky.social Podcast >>> youtu.be/FHQfmJEpRmU
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Protocol Labs @protocollabs.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Konrad Kording argues that the best way to understand the brain may be to read its wiring directly rather than infer it from the outside. @kordinglab.bsky.social joins @juanbenet.bsky.social for Ep 5 of the Juan Benet Podcast. Full episode: youtu.be/FHQfmJEpRmU
youtu.be
The Power of a Single Neuron and a Path to Simulating the Brain | Dr. Konrad Kording
YouTube video by Juan Benet Podcast
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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
great 2h discussion on neuroscience and simulation -- very introductory.
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jordan @jordan.matelsky.com · 15/06/2026
so I just realized I forgot to #skeetprint my Contactomes paper... (is that what we're calling it?) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @kordinglab.bsky.social @dacolon.bsky.social smithneurallab.weebly.com @jhuapl.bsky.social #academicsky #preprint #neuroscience
a single dendritic spine with a handful of synaptic partners but a HUGE number of contact partners
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Jonathan A. Michaels @jonathanamichaels.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Many of the scientific questions we're interested in tackling require studying learning over long periods of time across the brain. This is challenging – which is why we're excited to say we've been developing a system for chronic wireless recording using long Neuropixels probes in macaque monkeys.
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Community for Rigor @comm4rigor.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
📢 FREE Webinar: Doing Good Science When Resources are Limited June 11 @ 12 pm ET - 🔗 RSVP here: bit.ly/4vj8tAB We'll will examine how sound methodology, careful inference, and clear reporting operate when tradeoffs are unavoidable.
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Mattan S. Ben-Shachar @mattansb.msbstats.info · 31/05/2026
Psychologists doing clustering be like: #statsmeme
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Community for Rigor @comm4rigor.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Join us on Thursday, June 11, at 12 PM ET for an online conversation about conducting rigorous science under real-life constraints. RSVP @ bit.ly/4vj8tAB Particularly relevant for grad students analyzing data, writing manuscripts, or approaching thesis‑level decisions, though everyone is welcome!
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Stories of WiN @storiesofwin.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Check out our latest profile! Dr. Megan Peters (@meganakpeters.bsky.social) studies how the brain represents & uses uncertainty and she also co-founded the online summer school, Neuromatch Academy. Learn more at the link below! #WomenInNeuroscience #StoriesOfWiN www.storiesofwin.org/profiles/202...
storiesofwin.org
Dr. Megan Peters — Stories of WiN
studies how the brain represents and uses uncertainty and she also co-founded the online summer school, Neuromatch Academy
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Thomas Yeo @bttyeo.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Here's bonus slides on cross-validation tests, separate from our preprint. Covering: 1. paired (sign-flip) permutation test 2. label-swap permutation test 3. sample-level vs fold-averaged stats 4. a common misapplication of the corrected t-test 5. three bootstrap variants 1/N
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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
Statistically crossvalidation folds are not independent. The number of papers treating them as if they were is off the charts.
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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Is it true that Robin is the first multi-agent system capable of fully automating both hypothesis generation and data analysis for experimental biology? If you take out "multi-agent" I believe the old Tenenbaum work qualifies?
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Kayson Fakhar @kayson.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
🚨 The actual paper is now out on @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... In this opinion piece, @duncanastle.bsky.social and I explore the human brain through the lens of optimality and Pareto-optimality theory.
sciencedirect.com
Embracing the suboptimal organization of the human brain
Human brain architecture is guiding brain-inspired artificial intelligence (AI) and has been treated as an optimal template, whose deviations could ma…
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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
My new @thetransmitter.bsky.social piece. Does Claude AI have emotions? *No*. Does Claude have nontrivial emotion-equivalents? *Yes*. Like your "memory" vs your laptop's; similar but not the same. Here, I unpack why that's interesting. www.thetransmitter.org/emotion/what...
thetransmitter.org
What can AI teach us about ‘emotions’?
Exploring why Anthropic’s AI, Claude, displays something like emotion could ultimately help us better understand the function that emotions serve in humans.
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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
New report finds that people with sustained attention play more music. Congratulations to the attention havers! We should pay more for attention lessons!
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Earl K. Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Our brains don’t think in a steady stream. They rhythmically “scan” different alternatives, using attention cycles to sample and compare choices. Rhythmic sampling of multiple decision alternatives in the human brain www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroscience
nature.com
Rhythmic sampling of multiple decision alternatives in the human brain - Nature Communications
How humans process competing information when making multi-alternative decisions remains unclear. Here, the authors show that the brain resolves the trade-off between “evaluating within” and “comparin...
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Emily Moin @emilymoin.com · 11/12/2024
I'm crabby today but I wish we could have a little less pearl-clutching over "the children are citing AI hallucinations" and a little more over "tenured academics are citing documents that cite documents that cite documents that cite documents that don't support their claims."
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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Feedforward sweep is a bad idea. And brains don't seem to do it.
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jordan @jordan.matelsky.com · 13/05/2026
reminder for those writing grants these days — we made a tool to fill out your NSF/NIH COA lists automatically :) bib.experiments.kordinglab.com/nsf-coa #academicsky
bib.experiments.kordinglab.com
NSF COA | Jordan Matelsky
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