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Nick Blauch

@nblauch.bsky.social
235 followers 420 following 36 posts

Perception + Robotics @ NVIDIA | prev. Postdoc @ Harvard Vision Sciences Lab, Ph.D in Neural Computation @ CMU nblauch.github.io

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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
Personal 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!
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
To 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
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
Very excited to be in Amsterdam for #CCN2025! See below for my two presentations -- a talk today and a poster Friday. Come say hi!
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Martin Schrimpf @mschrimpf.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
What 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
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Zhenglong Zhou @neurozz.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
Excited 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/4kB1yg5
bit.ly
A gradient of complementary learning systems emerges through meta-learning
Long-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...
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Tim Kietzmann @timkietzmann.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
Exciting 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/2507.03168
arxiv.org
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
Very 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.
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Tim Kietzmann @timkietzmann.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
Can 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...
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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 17/06/2025
Has nominative determinism gone too far h/t @benjaminschneider.ch
A university profile of "Dr Amy Lloyd" who works as a research fellow on Alzheimer's research
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ACLU @aclu.org · 16/06/2025
BREAKING: 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.
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
What 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
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Jens-Bastian Eppler @j-b-eppler.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
Our 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.
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Pete Buttigieg @petebuttigieg.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
America 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.
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Greta Tuckute @gretatuckute.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
What 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
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Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 22/05/2025
Respectfully, 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.
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Dr. 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.com
Trump’s NIH And NSF Cuts Estimated To Cost The U.S. Economy $10 Billion Annually
Economists find public R&D drives a quarter of U.S. productivity growth — and pays for itself
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Leyla Isik @lisik.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
I’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
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Earl K. Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
How Your Brain Splits Space to Double Its Perception Power neurosciencenews.com/brain-hemisp... #neuroscience
neurosciencenews.com
How Your Brain Splits Space to Double Its Perception Power - Neuroscience News
Despite popular myths about left- and right-brain thinking, research shows the hemispheres truly do divide up certain tasks—especially visual spatial perception.
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
Just 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!
Two computational neuroscientists meet in person after years of remote work and friendship following meeting at the Neuromatch Academy summer schoolThe Georgia Tech campus is very prettyThe postdoc according to Dickens, by Bob Wilson
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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 02/05/2025
Time to catch up on the past week’s news about science and medicine in the US. Whew. 1/10
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Boris Bernhardt @borismontreal.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
in 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...
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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
NIH 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...
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Maddy Jalbert @maddyjalbert.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
I 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.
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Sarah Lempriere @sarahlempriere.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
Dendritic arbors structure memories | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Dendritic arbors structure memories
Synapses on different dendritic domains store distinct types of information
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Maya Sen @mayasen.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
There 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
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Mashbayar Tugsbayar @tmshbr.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
Top-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.org
Top-down feedback matters: Functional impact of brainlike connectivity motifs on audiovisual integration
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
Extremely 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.edu
The Promise of American Higher Education
No 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
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Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 13/04/2025
1. 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.
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Anna Schapiro @annaschapiro.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
This 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.com
The Conservative Activist Pushing Trump to Attack U.S. Colleges
Christopher Rufo has helped inspire Republican messaging and bills on hot-button issues.
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Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
This 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."
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
See how this works? www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
bloomberg.com
Billionaires Score Best-Ever Day as Stocks Soar on Tariff Pause
The 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 ...
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Dr. 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
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PessoaBrain @pessoabrain.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
Interesting 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...
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allen institute @alleninstitute.org · 09/04/2025
How does the brain work? Scientists are closer to the answer with the largest wiring diagram and functional map of a mammalian brain to date. 🧵 🧠📈
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Scott Delaney @scott-delaney.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
The 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.gle
Cancelled NIH grant information submission form
Please 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...
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Calli McMurray @callimcflurry.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
A 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... #neuroskyence
thetransmitter.org
What infant fMRI is revealing about the developing mind
Cognitive neuroscientists have finally clocked how to perform task-based fMRI experiments in awake babies. Now they want watch cognition take shape.
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This skeet will self destruct @pardoguerra.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
I 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.
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Nancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
Here 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... ......
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Shahab 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) 🧠📈🤖
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
Read this www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
thecrimson.com
First They Came for Columbia | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson
We 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.
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Satpreet (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.io
Workshop Title
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Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
So 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.
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Tristan Yates @tristansyates.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
Last 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.
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T. Anderson Keller @andykeller.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
In 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
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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
I 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.
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Kanaka Rajan @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
Enjoyed 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...
Digital illustration of a school of red fish with simple geometric features on a purple background. Some fish are connected by curved dashed and solid lines, suggesting interactions or relationships between them.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 08/02/2025
1. 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.gov
NOT-OD-25-068: Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Grants Policy Statement: Indirect Cost Rates
NIH 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
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Surya Ganguli @suryaganguli.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
Don’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)
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Nancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Academic 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.com
Join researchers across the country in fighting restrictions on the NIH
Please click the link to complete this form.
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