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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 · 18/05/2026
wow so happy to see this congrats @tristansyates.bsky.social ! i ❤️ pgh
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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 · 19/09/2025
well deserved, awesome paper!
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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 · 22/08/2025
pre-moderation is good -- but since psyarxiv historically ignored post-moderation for months, this result is not fair to authors of legitimate preprints submitted months ago, which are now unavailable at public DOIs. please restore them asap and take down only problematic preprints from pre-switch.
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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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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 20/07/2025
With all due respect to AI, that pizza is way too small
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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
thanks Lenny! I think our 2022 PNAS paper is pretty relevant too - see Figures 5, S8-10, and S21 for sub-domain organization. we don't always get the same sub-domain clusters (except scenes: indoor vs. outdoor), but that is a cool pointer for future models!
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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
Thanks to my Ph.D advisors Dave Plaut and Marlene Behrmann for their amazing advising on this work! And thanks to my current postdoc home in the Harvard Vision Lab for really productive discussions on presentations of this work leading to the writeup. Thanks for reading! 14/14
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
If you like this sort of work -- be sure to check out the fantastic upcoming CCN workshop on biophysical modeling of the human brain. neuroailab.github.io/modeling-th... 13/n
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Lots more discussion of these and related ideas in the paper, if you're interested, check it out here: osf.io/preprints/p... 12/n
osf.io
Retinotopic scaffolding of high-level vision
Functional specialization within high-level vision is reflected in the topographic organization of the ventral temporal cortex (VTC). The presence and consistent locations of small areas responding selectively to particular visual categories – such as faces and scenes – has led to proposals of innate domain-specific modules. However, such proposals do not easily explain other aspects of an apparently multi-scale topographic organization of high-level visual features in VTC. Computational models have recently accounted for the presence of domain-selective areas and other facets of topographic organization from a basic optimization process with local topographic pressures, such as locally constrained connectivity, but fail to account for the consistent location of category-selectivity. In the current work, we extend a recent computational model to demonstrate how this consistency may emerge from wiring constraints external to VTC, focusing on the role of retinotopically organized early v
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Moreover, a move towards active foveated vision will allow for much more realistic modeling of viewing biases. I've been working a new model for foveated vision with my postdoc advisors @talia_konkle and @grez72 and we hope to release a pre-print and code later this summer.
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Note: we are not suggesting retinotopic connectivity is the only constraint on high-level visual organization. Future models must wrestle with the role of other long-range connectivity. This will require more sophisticated interfaces between vision and cognition. 11/n
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
In summary, our work highlights how the same principle of connectivity constrained task optimization that has explained the presence of topographic organization, can also explain the global topographic organization of the brain, when external connectivity is considered. 10/n
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
However, when we trained on less broad distributions of viewing size, the topographic responses became less invariant to retinotopic variation. At small sizes, scenes responded more like objects, and at large sizes, objects responded more like scenes. 9/n
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Domain-level responses were highly invariant to the input size, suggesting the model wasn't merely recapitulating the retinotopic responses of the input areas, but had learned to efficiently organize its representations given the viewing biases and retinotopic connectivity. 8/n
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Critically, this systematic organization is consistent across model runs (B), as in the human brain (A). When we remove the retinotopic connectivity constraint (C), we see topographic selectivity, but without any group-level consistency, as expected. 7/n
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
This produces a systematic organization of domains in the medial-lateral axis, putting face representations closer to foveal inputs, and scene representations closer to peripheral inputs, as in human VTC. The organization is functionally relevant, as confirmed lesions. 6/n
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
We implement this retinotopic constraint as a connectivity cost on V4 feature map inputs into our topographic "ventral temporal cortex" (VTC) layers, w/ viewing biases. Faces and objects are viewed at smaller sizes than scenes, with overlapping distributions. 5/n
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Here, we build on the Eccentricity Bias theory, which states that the retinotopic organization of early visual cortex constrains the organization of higher-level visual cortex, since stimuli like faces and words are foveated, while scenes take up the full periphery. 4/n
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
In all these models, when we change the random initialization, selectivity moves around. In contrast, the consistency of the topographic layout in humans has been argued to suggest innate pre-specification. What could explain the consistent global organization? 3/n
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
And work from many others ( @dyamins.bksy.social, @eshedmargalit, @kalanitgs.bsky.social, @adriendoerig.bsky.social, @timkietzmann.bsky.social, @apurvaratan.bsky.social, @andykeller.bsky.social, @taliakonkle.bsky.social, @bashivan.bsky.social, etc.) 3/n
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Recent spatially-constrained deep neural networks have shown how task-optimized learning under local constraints in high-level vision gives rise to smooth organization of representations and functionally relevant clusters of category-selectivity. Ours: 2/n
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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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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
💯
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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 · 09/05/2025
The best part is that paper 2 results are already done before paper 1 is through peer review
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Nick Blauch @nblauch.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
meaning what exactly? do i need to bring some new england IPAs? i don't know how well they will travel...
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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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