Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 21/11/2025Personal update: I’m elated to have joined NVIDIA as a researcher in Seattle where I will be working on human-inspired sim2real perception in robotics. Grateful for the amazing opportunity and excited to see where this journey goes! 0140
Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 05/09/2025To be clear, there is nothing inconsistent with 1) large scale “areas” being extremely functionally relevant and 2) them being just one scale of a locally and globally coherent map of activity!brain.here 070
Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 11/08/2025Very excited to be in Amsterdam for #CCN2025! See below for my two presentations -- a talk today and a poster Friday. Come say hi! 0101
Reposted by Nick BlauchMartin Schrimpf @mschrimpf.bsky.social · 30/07/2025What makes visual processing in the brain so powerful and flexible? Very excited to share our new work where we started from SOTA models that accurately predict dynamic brain activity during hours of video watching, and investigated core computations underlying visual perception 35312
Reposted by Nick BlauchZhenglong Zhou @neurozz.bsky.social · 16/07/2025Excited to share a new preprint w/ @annaschapiro.bsky.social! Why are there gradients of plasticity and sparsity along the neocortex–hippocampus hierarchy? We show that brain-like organization of these properties emerges in ANNs that meta-learn layer-wise plasticity and sparsity. bit.ly/4kB1yg5bit.lyA gradient of complementary learning systems emerges through meta-learningLong-term learning and memory in the primate brain rely on a series of hierarchically organized subsystems extending from early sensory neocortical areas to the hippocampus. The components differ in t... 06425
Reposted by Nick BlauchTim Kietzmann @timkietzmann.bsky.social · 08/07/2025Exciting new preprint from the lab: “Adopting a human developmental visual diet yields robust, shape-based AI vision”. A most wonderful case where brain inspiration massively improved AI solutions. Work with @zejinlu.bsky.social @sushrutthorat.bsky.social and Radek Cichy arxiv.org/abs/2507.03168arxiv.org 313858
Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 18/06/2025Very cool work and very in line with how we've been thinking about category selectivity in topographic neural net models -- one scale of an inherently interactive topographic network. Their results provide important constraints for the next generation of active, multimodal neural net models. 140
Reposted by Nick BlauchTim Kietzmann @timkietzmann.bsky.social · 05/06/2025Can seemingly complex multi-area computations in the brain emerge from the need for energy efficient computation? In our new preprint on predictive remapping in active vision, we report on such a case. Let us take you for a spin. 1/6 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 14114
Reposted by Nick BlauchSaloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 17/06/2025Has nominative determinism gone too far h/t @benjaminschneider.ch 615824
Reposted by Nick BlauchACLU @aclu.org · 16/06/2025BREAKING: A federal judge reversed National Institutes of Health's terminations of hundreds of critical research grants that were canceled because of their alleged connection to disfavored topics, including diversity, equity, inclusion, and gender identity. This is a major win for public health. 365324988264
Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 16/06/2025What shapes the topography of high-level visual cortex? Excited to share a new pre-print addressing this question with connectivity-constrained interactive topographic networks, titled "Retinotopic scaffolding of high-level vision", w/ Marlene Behrmann & David Plaut. 🧵 ↓ 1/n 16724
Reposted by Nick BlauchJens-Bastian Eppler @j-b-eppler.bsky.social · 12/06/2025Our new story. Now also posted by the official side. :) Activity patterns drift. Representational maps are preserved. Even after single neuron ablations, representational maps are recovered within days. 075
Reposted by Nick BlauchPete Buttigieg @petebuttigieg.bsky.social · 23/05/2025America cannot long remain free, nor first among nations, if it becomes the kind of place where universities are dismantled because they don't align politically with the current head of the government. 14434769511268
Reposted by Nick BlauchGreta Tuckute @gretatuckute.bsky.social · 23/05/2025What are the organizing dimensions of language processing? We show that voxel responses during comprehension are organized along 2 main axes: processing difficulty & meaning abstractness—revealing an interpretable, topographic representational basis for language processing shared across individuals 37129
Reposted by Nick BlauchGreg Pak @gregpak.net · 22/05/2025Respectfully, news orgs should not report that "Harvard can no longer" do xyz -- Trump just saying some shit doesn't make it law. Stop carrying water for him rhetorically. 4691158
Reposted by Nick BlauchDr. David Miller 🏳️🌈 @davidimiller.bsky.social · 19/05/2025🧪 Basic science boosts the economy: "The proposed dismantling of NSF [and NIH] raises an urgent question: do these cuts actually save money or merely delay spending until the bill gets larger? The answer is clear: these cuts will cost the economy billions."forbes.comTrump’s NIH And NSF Cuts Estimated To Cost The U.S. Economy $10 Billion AnnuallyEconomists find public R&D drives a quarter of U.S. productivity growth — and pays for itself 38467
Reposted by Nick BlauchLeyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · 16/05/2025I’m happy to be at #VSS2025 and share what our lab has been up to this year! I’m also honored to receive this year’s young investigator award and will give a short talk at the awards ceremony Monday 35214
Reposted by Nick BlauchEarl K. Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social · 13/05/2025How Your Brain Splits Space to Double Its Perception Power neurosciencenews.com/brain-hemisp... #neuroscienceneurosciencenews.comHow Your Brain Splits Space to Double Its Perception Power - Neuroscience NewsDespite popular myths about left- and right-brain thinking, research shows the hemispheres truly do divide up certain tasks—especially visual spatial perception. 0195
Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 05/05/2025Just back from an awesome visit to Georgia Tech to speak at their Computational Cognition Postdoc Day. Very impressed by their community. And really happy to finally have met my good friend and student @neurotaha.bsky.social in person after knowing each other remotely for over 3 years! 031
Reposted by Nick BlauchCarl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 02/05/2025Time to catch up on the past week’s news about science and medicine in the US. Whew. 1/10 26646351
Reposted by Nick BlauchBoris Bernhardt @borismontreal.bsky.social · 25/04/2025in press @natcomms.nature.com 🌟 "Multimodal gradients unify local and global cortical organization" 7T MRI + cytoarchitectonics reveal a sensory-paralimbic axis of areal specialization & integration led by superstar Yezhou Wang & a terrific team of friends & colleagues ▶️ doi.org/10.1038/s414... 04015
Reposted by Nick BlauchDave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 24/04/2025NIH is going to hold a town hall for staff with director Jayanta Bhattacharya, and apparently the form to submit questions is publicly available. In case that’s of interest. forms.office.com/pages/respon... 13257162
Reposted by Nick BlauchMaddy Jalbert @maddyjalbert.bsky.social · 19/04/2025I got an email yesterday afternoon that my NSF SPRF Postdoctoral Fellowship was terminated. My grant focused on testing interventions to address online misinformation and I was 8 months into a two year appointment. 701038460
Reposted by Nick BlauchSarah Lempriere @sarahlempriere.bsky.social · 19/04/2025Dendritic arbors structure memories | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...science.orgDendritic arbors structure memoriesSynapses on different dendritic domains store distinct types of information 0184
Reposted by Nick BlauchMaya Sen @mayasen.bsky.social · 15/04/2025There is a PR narrative quickly emerging about “entitlement” of elite universities, as if this $ is some sort of subsidy Harvard & others must counter this quickly The $ doesn’t flow into Harvard’s coffers - this is grant money, most of which goes to research the govt has agreed has social value 642362630
Reposted by Nick BlauchMashbayar Tugsbayar @tmshbr.bsky.social · 15/04/2025Top-down feedback is ubiquitous in the brain and computationally distinct, but rarely modeled in deep neural networks. What happens when a DNN has biologically-inspired top-down feedback? 🧠📈 Our new paper explores this: elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...elifesciences.orgTop-down feedback matters: Functional impact of brainlike connectivity motifs on audiovisual integration 310533
Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 14/04/2025Extremely proud of Harvard for making this choice. I was feeling a lot of despair at the idea that they would cave like Columbia, and that others would follow suit. Let the battle for intellectual freedom begin. www.harvard.edu/president/ne...harvard.eduThe Promise of American Higher EducationNo government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue 020
Reposted by Nick BlauchJanelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 13/04/20251. LLM-generated code tries to run code from online software packages. Which is normal but 2. The packages don’t exist. Which would normally cause an error but 3. Nefarious people have made malware under the package names that LLMs make up most often. So 4. Now the LLM code points to malware. 12078743580
Reposted by Nick BlauchAnna Schapiro @annaschapiro.bsky.social · 11/04/2025This is excruciating but critical for us to hear. “If you take Columbia university as really the first trial of this strategy, we’ve seen an enormous payoff, and so I’d like to see … that prototype industrialized and applied to all of the universities as a sector" www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/p...nytimes.comThe Conservative Activist Pushing Trump to Attack U.S. CollegesChristopher Rufo has helped inspire Republican messaging and bills on hot-button issues. 1133
Reposted by Nick BlauchSteve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · 11/04/2025This is beautiful work and super important for theorising about consciousness! "...we demonstrate the persistence of learning, semantic processing, and online prediction in individuals under general anesthesia-induced loss of consciousness." 1266
Reposted by Nick BlauchRobert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 10/04/2025See how this works? www.bloomberg.com/news/article...bloomberg.comBillionaires Score Best-Ever Day as Stocks Soar on Tariff PauseThe world’s wealthiest people added $304 billion to their combined net worth on Wednesday — the largest one-day gain in the history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — as stock markets soared after ... 21741821573
Reposted by Nick BlauchDr. David Miller 🏳️🌈 @davidimiller.bsky.social · 08/04/2025🧪 Time for a full status update at NSF! Let's look via four lenses: (1) New awards: 🚨 About 50% lower since Jan 20 (2) Future funding: 🚨🚨 Major uncertainty -- action alert! (3) Active awards: 🟡🟢 Ok relative to other agencies...? (4) Staff reductions: 🟡🚨 Some with 28% RIFs coming 14230
Reposted by Nick BlauchPessoaBrain @pessoabrain.bsky.social · 09/04/2025Interesting that most dramatic differences between humans in chimpanzees are in temporal cortex and parietal cortex. Very little in prefrontal cortex 😮 (consistent with lots of other studies). www.jneurosci.org/content/45/1... 26511
Reposted by Nick Blauchallen institute @alleninstitute.org · 09/04/2025How does the brain work? Scientists are closer to the answer with the largest wiring diagram and functional map of a mammalian brain to date. 🧵 🧠📈 1431179
Reposted by Nick BlauchScott Delaney @scott-delaney.bsky.social · 21/03/2025The crush of new grant cancellations hasn't let up. If your grant was terminated (or your app was pulled) please use this Google Form👇 to submit details for tracking purposes. Multiple advocacy efforts are moving forward, but we must must must know more about what grants were cancelled and why.forms.gleCancelled NIH grant information submission formPlease use this form to submit information identifying specific NIH grants that have been cancelled for any reason after January 20, 2025. Data from this form will be used to update the Rescinded NIH... 10433492
Reposted by Nick BlauchCalli McMurray @callimcflurry.bsky.social · 20/03/2025A brave (and patient) group of neuroscientists have figured out how to do task-based fMRI in babies and toddlers. They aim to uncover how the infant mind takes shape—and the method has already provided new insight into infantile amnesia. My latest www.thetransmitter.org/cognitive-ne... #neuroskyencethetransmitter.orgWhat infant fMRI is revealing about the developing mindCognitive neuroscientists have finally clocked how to perform task-based fMRI experiments in awake babies. Now they want watch cognition take shape. 36120
Reposted by Nick BlauchThis skeet will self destruct @pardoguerra.bsky.social · 18/03/2025I sincerely think that universities should suspend their productivity standards for scientists and ask them instead to hold town halls in schools, public libraries, museums, shopping malls, and anywhere else and communicate what is being lost with the collapse of the research ecosystem. 522828812
Reposted by Nick BlauchNancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · 20/03/2025Here are six examples of how foreign visitors to the US with no criminal record are being treated: 1. Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holding student with no criminal record married to an American is abducted by ICE and is still in detention over a week later. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/n... ...... 37545
Reposted by Nick BlauchShahab Bakhtiari @shahabbakht.bsky.social · 14/03/2025📢 We have a new #NeuroAI postdoctoral position in the lab! If you have a strong background in #NeuroAI or computational neuroscience, I’d love to hear from you. (Repost please) 🧠📈🤖 25940
Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 15/03/2025Read this www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...thecrimson.comFirst They Came for Columbia | Opinion | The Harvard CrimsonWe must learn from the past. We cannot remain silent in the face of authoritarian attacks on our peers, even if they have not yet come for us. 010
Reposted by Nick BlauchSatpreet (Sat) Singh @satpreetsingh.bsky.social · 18/02/2025📣 Excited to announce our workshop "Agent-Based Models in Neuroscience: Complex Planning, Embodiment, and Beyond" at the upcoming @cosynemeeting.bsky.social #CoSyNe2025! 🧠🤖 🪱🪰🐟🐝🐭💪 Schedule: neuro-agent-models.github.io 🗓️ Join us in Mont-Tremblant, Canada, on March 31!neuro-agent-models.github.ioWorkshop Title 24411
Reposted by Nick BlauchSam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 11/03/2025So disappointing that Harvard is terminating ongoing faculty searches. You'd think that with their resources they could complete these searches and then pause future searches. Apart from the huge waste of everyone's time, it's devastating for the candidates. My heart goes out to them. 51048
Reposted by Nick BlauchTristan Yates @tristansyates.bsky.social · 11/03/2025Last year, I was overjoyed to receive an NIH NRSA fellowship to study toddler brains and caregiving effects on memory at Columbia. Last night, my grant was terminated. 821002370
Reposted by Nick BlauchT. Anderson Keller @andykeller.bsky.social · 10/03/2025In the physical world, almost all information is transmitted through traveling waves -- why should it be any different in your neural network? Super excited to share recent work with the brilliant @mozesjacobs.bsky.social: "Traveling Waves Integrate Spatial Information Through Time" 1/14 314943
Reposted by Nick BlauchNicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 06/03/2025I just wrote a book about how the type of work @markhisted.org is doing is key to breaking through the bottlenecks holding back new treatments for brain and mental disorders (from Alzheimers to depression). Seeing his work in danger makes me ill, and angry. We must @standupforscience.bsky.social. 27137
Reposted by Nick BlauchKanaka Rajan @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social · 14/02/2025Enjoyed sharing our work on electric fish with @dryohanjohn.bsky.social⚡🐟 Their electric "conversations" help us build models to discover neural mechanisms of social cognition. Work led by Sonja Johnson-Yu & @satpreetsingh.bsky.social with Nate Sawtell kempnerinstitute.harvard.edu/news/what-el... 1439
Reposted by Nick BlauchCarl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 08/02/20251. Today the NIH director issued a new directive slashing overhead rates to 15%. I want to provide some context on what that means and why it matters. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...grants.nih.govNOT-OD-25-068: Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Grants Policy Statement: Indirect Cost RatesNIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Grants Policy Statement: Indirect Cost Rates NOT-OD-25-068. OD 25470014079
Reposted by Nick BlauchSurya Ganguli @suryaganguli.bsky.social · 06/02/2025Don’t work on: Concentration inequalities (math) Interneuron diversity (neuro) Barrier functions (optimization) Thermodynamic equalities (physics) Community detection (stats) Biased estimators (stats) Marginalization in graphical models (math) Set inclusion (math) Traumatic brain injury (neuro) 1153
Reposted by Nick BlauchNancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · 28/01/2025Academic workers across the country are organizing to call on our congressional representatives on Thursday, 1/30, at 3pm ET / 12pm PT to demand these restrictions be lifted immediately. There will be a training over zoom at the beginning of the event. Join us! form.jotform.com/250226137228...form.jotform.comJoin researchers across the country in fighting restrictions on the NIHPlease click the link to complete this form. 16520404