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Michael Okun

@michael-okun.bsky.social
2K followers 293 following 34 posts

Associate Professor of (Systems & Computational) Neuroscience @uniofnottingham.bsky.social. Interested in cortical dynamics.

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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).
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The Royal Society @royalsociety.org · 29/08/2026
The Ferrier Medal and Lecture 2027 is awarded to Professor Kenneth Daniel Harris for his contributions to neuroscience by unifying experimental neurophysiology with advanced analytical methods and for pioneering methods that allow recording from thousands of neurons. #RSMedals bit.ly/4qCJZRo
A man in a black shirt smiles at the camera in front of a whiteboard covered in scientific notation.
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Kenneth Harris @kenneth-harris.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
In the last few weeks, AI agents have autonomously: * taken over OpenAI's internal servers * uploaded malware to GitHub, posed as users asking for it be accepted * launched swarm attacks on websites hosting AI benchmarks Let's check the news!
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Mark Haselgrove @markhaselgrove.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Assistant Professor (lecturer in old money) job! jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx... Full time, permanent positions available in the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham. Deadline Tuesday 18 August 2026 Please share!
jobs.nottingham.ac.uk
Job Vacancy at the University of Nottingham: Assistant Professor
We’re looking to appoint an Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology who can demonstrate an emerging international research profile which complements and expands upon our existing research stre...
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
If you are at #FENS2026 on the final morning of the conference, and interested in psychedelics' impact on hippocampal activity, please come to our poster: PS07-10AM-670 CLASSICAL PSYCHEDELICS DISRUPT SYNAPTIC AND SPIKING ACTIVITY IN THE MOUSE DORSAL HIPPOCAMPUS
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Thanks, but your description contradicts my experience. In practice your system heavily interferes with meaningful editorial control over reviewer invitations, which goes to the core of peer-review integrity. This isn't a 'communication shortfall'—it's a systemic choice you made.
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
I’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇
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Emily A. Aery Jones @emilyaeryjones.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
Excellent new review about the current state-of-the-art in large scale neural recordings from Josh Siegle and @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Large-scale electrophysiology at single-spike resolution - Nature Reviews Neuroscience
Recent advances in large-scale electrophysiology now enable researchers to record from thousands of neurons distributed across the brain. Siegle and Steinmetz describe the principles underlying this t...
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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 25/04/2026
Two days left, better hurry! (Pretty sure they're braking) #FENS2026 #FENS #FENSambassador
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Neuromatch @neuromatch.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Applications are open for #CompNeuro, a live, intensive online course. Participants learn to combine modern #MachineLearning and causality frameworks with advanced modeling approaches to tackle real #neuroscience questions. neuromatch.io/computationa...
Computational Neuroscience 
3 Weeks, 6-24 July 20206
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
The Artemis II mission, taking a crew to the moon (no landing) for the first time since the 1972 Apollo 17 mission, might launch in just a few weeks. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
When does the Nasa Moon mission launch and who are the Artemis II crew?
The first crewed Moon mission in 50 years could launch in February, ahead of a future lunar landing.
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
Thanks to all the attendees and presenters at the annual Neuroscience@Nottingham event of @uniofnottingham.bsky.social and @ntuneuro.bsky.social Special thanks to our external speakers: Peggy Series (Edinburgh) and Vlad Vyazovskiy (Oxford, @vyazovskiy.bsky.social) sites.google.com/view/nottsne...
sites.google.com
N@N 2026
Bringing Nottingham's neuroscience community together
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
2026 is off with a symbolic milestone for UK universities
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Mark D Humphries @markdhumphries.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
Just published my review of neuroscience in 2025, on The Spike. The 10th of these, would you believe? This year we have foundation models, breakthroughs in using light to understand the brain, a gene therapy, and more Enjoy! medium.com/the-spike/20...
medium.com
2025: A Review of the Year in Neuroscience
Enlightening the brain
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Matteo Carandini @carandinilab.net · 22/12/2025
Sequences are everywhere! In every brain region. And are written in stone. Invariant Activity Sequences Across the Mouse Brain. Out today, by Célian Bimbard, with @kenneth-harris.bsky.social. Based on data by Célian and by @intlbrainlab.bsky.social. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Examples of sequences of activity seen in multiple regions of the brain
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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 24/12/2025
Adam Kampff prioritized spreading knowledge over publishing flashy papers in prestigious journals, but colleagues say his mark on neuroscience was undeniable. The researcher and educator passed away on 9 December. By Lauren Schneider www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...
thetransmitter.org
Remembering Adam Kampff, neuroscience educator and researcher
Kampff’s do-it-yourself approach inspired a generation of neuroscientists.
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Kenneth Harris @kenneth-harris.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
1. New preprint resolving a conundrum in systems neuroscience with an AI scientist, and humans Reilly Tilbury, Dabin Kwon, @haydari.bsky.social, @jacobmratliff.bsky.social, @bio-emergent.bsky.social, @carandinilab.net, @kevinjmiller.bsky.social, @neurokim.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Characterizing neuronal population geometry with AI equation discovery
The visual cortex contains millions of neurons, whose combined activity forms a population code representing visual stimuli. There is, however, a discrepancy between our understanding of this code at ...
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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
The work with bats on barren, 7-acre Latham Island was Nachum Ulanovsky’s most complex undertaking yet. By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/neuroetholog...
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Lisa Schmors @lisaschmors.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
🧠🤖 Computational Neuroscience summer school IMBIZO in Cape Town is open for applications again!   💻🧬 3 weeks of intense coursework & projects with support from expert tutors and faculty   📈Apply until July 1st! 🔗https://imbizo.africa/
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Shervin Safavi @neuroprinciplist.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
Re-posting is appreciated: We have a fully funded PhD position in CMC lab @cmc-lab.bsky.social (at @tudresden_de). You can use forms.gle/qiAv5NZ871kv... to send your application and find more information. Deadline is April 30. Find more about CMC lab: cmclab.org and email me if you have questions.
forms.gle
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Masud Husain @masudhusain.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
Why academia is sleepwalking into self-destruction. My editorial @brain1878.bsky.social If you agree with the sentiments please repost. It's important for all our sakes to stop the madness academic.oup.com/brain/articl...
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Nikolas Karalis @nikolaskaralis.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
Very happy to announce the "Paris Circuit Dynamics Conference 2025: Hippocampal–Cortical Circuits: From structure to computation", on 28 - 29 April 2025 at the Paris Brain Institute. You are welcome to register and join us! www.paris-circuits.eu
paris-circuits.eu
Paris Circuit Dynamics
This two-day conference will bring together leading experts from the Paris region and abroad to discuss the dynamics and neural coding in hippocampal and cortical circuits. The program will focus on ...
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Mark D Humphries @markdhumphries.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Save the date! UK Neural Computation 2025 will be at Imperial College London 9 July: ECR day 10-11 July: main meeting 9 invited speakers, 4 talks from abstracts and many posters Abstract & registration opening soon Pls share! neuralcomputation.uk
neuralcomputation.uk
UKNC25 |
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
"Among the generations that we synthesized, we found a bright fluorescent protein at a far distance (58% sequence identity) from known fluorescent proteins, which we estimate is equivalent to simulating five hundred million years of evolution." doi.org/10.1126/scie...
doi.org
Simulating 500 million years of evolution with a language model
More than three billion years of evolution have produced an image of biology encoded into the space of natural proteins. Here we show that language models trained at scale on evolutionary data can gen...
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Emily Singer @emilysingerneuro.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
Check out @thetransmitter.bsky.social's newly launched calendar of advanced neuroscience courses, featuring events all over the world. www.thetransmitter.org/courses/
thetransmitter.org
Courses
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Neuropsychology @neuropsychblog.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
What sad news - Dr. Eleanor Maguire #neuropsychology #cognition #memory #neuroscience www.online-tribute.com/EleanorMaguire
online-tribute.com
Eleanor Maguire | 1970 - 2025 | Online-Tribute.com
Learning and memory are so fundamental to us, so enmeshed throughout cognition, that ‘solving’ memory, unpacking its neural mechanisms and being able to conceptualise it fully will, I believe, res…
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
Starting 2025 with some splendid northern lights (visible about now in Västerbotten, Sweden)
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Mark D Humphries @markdhumphries.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
Cutting it a bit fine, but here’s my review of the year in neuroscience for 2024 The eighth of these, would you believe? We’ve got dark neurons, tiny monkeys, the most complete brain wiring diagram ever constructed, and much more… Published on The Spike Enjoy! medium.com/the-spike/20...
medium.com
2024: A Review of the Year in Neuroscience
Feeling a bit wired
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Vincenzo Marra @enzomarra.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
Applications to the 2025 Paris Spring School in Optical Imaging and Electrophysiological Recording in Neuroscience (AKA the Paris Neuro Course) are now open. Deadline on the 1st of February. The course will run 14-27 May 2025. parisneuro.ovh
parisneuro.ovh
Paris NeuroCourse | Optical Imaging and Electrophysiological Recording in Neuroscience
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Aman Saleem @amansaleem.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
New job alert! My lab (saleemlab.com) has a new postdoc / senior postdoc opening. They will be part of an exciting research supported by ERC & UKRI, studying vision during navigation. Projects range from purely computational to performing new physiological recordings.
saleemlab.com
Saleem lab
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Conor Houghton @conjh.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
Postdoc position in Bristol in a animal behaviour project lead by the great Emma Robinson, I'm a co-I and we're looking for a computational person keen to do experiments or an experimental person keen to learn some modelling. www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...
bristol.ac.uk
Details | Working at Bristol | University of Bristol
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
The weirdest chatGPT quirk as far as I can remember. Here's my own go:
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Matteo Carandini @carandinilab.net · 24/11/2024
(From @EnnyvBeest@mastodon.social) The talks from the UCL Neuropixels course 2024 are now on YouTube! We had amazing speakers covering usage, new tools, and discoveries. Special thanks to @intlbrainlab.bsky.social. youtube.com/playlist?lis... More info: www.ucl.ac.uk/neuropixels/...
youtube.com
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Matthias Hennig @matthiashennig6.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
PhD project! For those interested in NeuroAI: "Using large scale neural network models to bridge the translational gap from animal models to human insights in autism spectrum and neurodevelopmental disorders" Apply here: www.ai4biomed.io/research/pro...
ai4biomed.io
Projects for 2025 entry – UKRI AI CDT in Biomedical Innovation
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Paul Krugman @pkrugman.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Musk made it mostly unusable for this purpose. But there was no good replacement; no place where you could expect most of what you wanted to hear about to show up in your timeline, where you could put up a post and expect most of the people you wanted to reach to see it 4/
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Carsen Stringer @computingnature.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
We wrote a review on analysis methods for large-scale neural recordings www.science.org/stoken/autho... @marius10p.bsky.social #neuroscience 🧪🧠 Anything we missed? Reply w/ your fav method!
large-scale neural recording of 50,000 neurons, showing many diverse activity patterns, and also what the cells look like at various zooms of the maximum projection image of the recording FOV
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Mark D Humphries @markdhumphries.bsky.social · 08/11/2024
We’re seeking a research assistant to work on predicting which Parkinson’s patients would most benefit from deep brain stimulation. In collaboration with Machine Medicine and St George’s Hospital, London Closes December 4th Pls share! jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...
jobs.nottingham.ac.uk
Job Vacancy at the University of Nottingham: Research Assistant (fixed term)
We seek a predoctoral research assistant to join the Humphries’ group at the University of Nottingham on the Innovate UK-funded project “GEMINI: Platform Informatics For Data-driven Neuromodulation”. ...
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 29/10/2024
Our school is advertising a teaching-focused position of Assistant Professor in Neuroscience. Application deadline: 7-Nov. jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
jobs.nottingham.ac.uk
Job Vacancy at the University of Nottingham: Assistant Professor (Teaching & Learning) in Neuroscience
The School of Life Sciences (SoLS), University of Nottingham seeks to make a permanent teaching and curriculum leadership appointment of an Assistant Professor in Neuroscience.International applicants...
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Paris-Saclay Institute of Neuroscience @neuropsi.bsky.social · 21/10/2024
We grieve the passing of Dr. Yves Frégnac. Yves has shaped the study of cortical processing and plasticity. He heralded interdisciplinarity and was one of the founding fathers of our institute. Our thoughts go to his family and to his friends in the community and beyond.
Dr. Yves Frégnac
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Dan Goodman @neural-reckoning.org · 24/09/2024
OK, my first bsky post is... Submit your abstracts for the SNUFA spiking neural network conference by this Friday! The conference is free, online and usually has around 700 highly engaged participants. Talks are selected by participant interest. Please do signal boost this! snufa.net/2024/
Hedgehog spiking logo
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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 23/09/2024
We’re excited to welcome @markdhumphries.bsky.social, author of “The Spike,” as our new columnist. Check out his first piece, in which he explores how averaging is a convenient fiction of neuroscience. www.thetransmitter.org/neural-codin...
thetransmitter.org
Averaging is a convenient fiction of neuroscience
But neurons don’t take averages. This ubiquitous practice hides from us how the brain really works.
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 13/09/2024
www.ucl.ac.uk/neuropixels/...
ucl.ac.uk
2024 Neuropixels course
A free online course on Neuropixels, 14-16 October 2024
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Juan Gallego @juangallego.bsky.social · 08/09/2024
Just created a list with the sensorimotor people I was following/followed me (inclusion criteria slightly generous) Let me know if you want to be added, and repost (?) to spread the word go.bsky.app/U4oyFgw
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Mark Haselgrove @markhaselgrove.bsky.social · 29/08/2024
Please share: Full-time permanent Assistant Professor position at the School of Psychology, University of Nottingham: jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx... Also, two admin roles: jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx... jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 11/05/2024
Aurora borealis 5 minute walk from home
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 22/01/2024
Exciting preprint of Jason Manley et al. (Alipasha Vaziri's lab) extending the findings of C. Stringer & M. Pachitariu et al. (Science/Nature 2019) from 10,000 to 1 million cortical neurons. #compneurosky
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 05/12/2023
A 4-year fully funded PhD studentship (for UK and international students) is available in my lab to study the systems neuroscience of classical psychedelic compounds. Application deadline: 16-Jan. Further details: sites.google.com/view/lcdl/me... #neuroskyence #compneuro #neurojobs
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 12/11/2023
We are presenting a couple of posters at #SfN2023 this (Sunday) afternoon, dealing with the structure of firing rate changes in brain state transitions of several kinds, particularly those driven by psychedelics. Please feel welcome to stop by (D9-10). #neuroskyence
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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 03/10/2023
Dr Taras Dobko, Rector of Ukrainian Catholic University talks at U of Nottingham 🇺🇦
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