iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

For the Intl. day of Women in Science, DPZ asked me about being a mother in academia. I brought up a concern, less known than the parental leave: banned access to work buildings. This is not challenged much, I think, because a pregnant academic is a minority of society: youtube.com/shorts/9sqY8...

youtube.com

Motherhood in Science: The Challenges We’re Still Facing — Neda Shahidi

YouTube video by Deutsches Primatenzentrum - Leibniz-Institut für Primatenforschung

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Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Our new collaborative project is officially starting. Piyali and I will use machine learning to determine how attributing perception to others, based on their embodied cues, influences our choices www.ugaze.de/projects/how...

ugaze.de

How do primates interpret and respond to others' intentions by observing their gazes? - Ulm University

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Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

That’s how you know he is a baby of academics: Ewan has a pediatrician visit next week and just started to do new developmental skills! Deadline driven like the rest of us 😁

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Embodied Cognition Group - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

I have an open position for an M.Sc. thesis, with the potential to continue into a paid PhD. If you know machine learning and are interested in naturalistic decision making in primates, email me a CV: www.uni-goettingen.de/de/embodied+...

uni-goettingen.de

Webseiten der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

A paper from my first postdoc is now out in PLOS Computational Biology. There, I have compared three probabilistic models of response suppression: subtraction, division, and negative feedback, for salamander, mouse, and marmoset retinal ganglion cells. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

From April: We had a poster at the primate neurobiology meeting where Sara presented a side-by-side comparison of vigilance in macaques in the lab and the field. It's interesting to see how naturalistic our naturalistic experiments are! This is a shared project with Julia Ostner's group at the DPZ.

dpz.eu

PNM-2025 | DPZ

You are here:

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Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

I have been back at work this week (although I never really left work!) after my son Ewan was born last December. He is a sweet and smiley little boy. I couldn't have asked for better.

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This week, René will present a poster of one of our floor foraging projects at a foraging conference in Lyon, France. Check out the program here: sites.google.com/view/foragin...

sites.google.com

Foraging conference - Programme

[ 11 to 13, December 2024 ]

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Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

From last week: René successfully finished his M.Sc. thesis. Together with Fabian Sinz and me, René developed a model to reconstruct the spiking activity of a population of neurons and tested it on neurons in the frontoparietal reach network (Data: courtesy of Alex Gail). Way to go, René!

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Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 17/10/2024

From October 1st: Welcome Numa Koudsie to ECG as a new research assistant. Numa will work on a neural network model to predict foraging success in a group of lemurs. This is a collaboration with Claudia Fichtel at the Behavioral Ecology Dept. (DPZ) and Fabian Sinz at the Data Science Dept. (UGOE)

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Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 17/10/2024

check out the article that Ayuno Nakahashi and I wrote for DPZ aktuell (page 25) about our experience at the Pint of Science, Göttingen. Too bad I missed Ayuno's cool experiment. www.dpz.eu/fileadmin/co...

dpz.eu

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Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 11/09/2024

from Sept 3rd: Thank you Tatyana Sharpee for visiting us in Goe on a short notice and giving a talk on using hyperbolic geometry to understand biological systems. We couldn't arrange online broadcasting of Tatyana's talk, but checkout this relevant publication: meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR2...

meetings.aps.org

APS -APS March Meeting 2024 - Event - Hyperbolic geometry and information acquisition in biological systems

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Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 10/07/2024

Wishing Hannah Lüschen, a member of ECG, the best for her next career step in one of the neuroscience M.Sc. programs that she has been accepted for. 🥳 Stay awesome Hannah! 🤩 Never change!

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Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 25/06/2024

Many thanks to my colleague at the University of Konstanz and MPI, specially Ahmed El Hadi, for the great scientific exchange (still going on). Details about my yesterday's talk at www.exc.uni-konstanz.de/collective-b... (and I believe a recording will be available on youtube later)

exc.uni-konstanz.de

CASCB Talk: “Learning a guess from a guess”, foraging macaques adjust to the environment’s temporal and spatial structure by Neda Shahidi

Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 18/06/2024

We discussed Fan et al., Neuron, 2024 in ECG jclub, led by Hannah: gazes with social context (eyes or face of another monkey) are causally controlled by orbitofrontal cortex in macaques. The gaze following seems to be controlled by dmPFC. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38187638/

Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 31/05/2024

From March 2024: we discussed Hung et al in ECG jclub, led by Sara: The study fund a decrease in the number of microsaccades, linked to adaptation and learning in the visual system www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Visual perceptual learning modulates microsaccade rate and directionality - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Visual perceptual learning modulates microsaccade rate and directionality

Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 31/05/2024

From April, 2024: We discussed Arseneau-Robar et. al. in ECG j club, led by Kacper: monkeys adapt their foraging based on experience and social context. Monkeys performed a foraging task with preferred and less less preferred food, competing with another monkey www.frontiersin.org/articles/10....

frontiersin.org

Think Fast!: Vervet Monkeys Assess the Risk of Being Displaced by a Dominant Competitor When Making Foraging Decisions

Foraging animals need to quickly assess the costs and benefits of different foraging decisions, including resource quantity, quality, preference, ease of access, dispersion, distance, and predation ri...

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Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 31/05/2024

We discussed Cowley et al, in ECG journal club, led by Sara. They turned off neurons in Lobula columnar, one by one, then, trained ANNs to map artificial and real LC neurons, then predicted ANN's response to a wide range of visual inputs to infer tuning of each neuron www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Mapping model units to visual neurons reveals population code for social behaviour - Nature

A deep neural network with ‘knockout training’ is used to model sensorimotor transformations and neural perturbations of male Drosophila melanogaster during visually guided social behaviour and p...

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Reposted by Neda Shahidi

SFB 1528 - Cognition of Interaction @sfb1528.bsky.social · 07/05/2024

Next week it is again "Pint of Science" Week, and we will be represented by Ayuno Nakahashi (@ayuno-n.bsky.social) and Neda Shahidi (@nedash.bsky.social). Looking forward to the talks at the Duke Pub and a cold brew 🍻. Cheers! pintofscience.de/events/goett...

pintofscience.de

Goettingen

Explore Pint of Science Germany events in Goettingen

Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 07/05/2024

We will offer a workshop on observational learning at Intl. Conf. in Development and Learning. Here are the details: www.uni-goettingen.de/de/687263.html Looking forward to be back in Austin, my second hometown

uni-goettingen.de

Learning by Watching - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Webseiten der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 03/05/2024

Read the interview of DPZ Aktuell with me about science, life, cats, and everything else here: www.dpz.eu/fileadmin/co...

dpz.eu

Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 16/03/2024

hbr.org/2018/03/crea... In a growth culture, people build their capacity to see through blind spots; acknowledge insecurities and shortcomings rather than unconsciously acting them out …How people feel — and make other people feel — becomes as important as how much they know.

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Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 05/03/2024

My new paper in Nature Neuroscience, based on a free foraging experiment I conducted during my PhD. Macaques self-pace actions for a better chance of reward, and we decoded their subjective belief of reward, leading to actions, from dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 25/01/2024

Artificial intelligence in primate research, a talk by my colleague Richard (in German) : www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rUh...

Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 22/12/2023

The days are going to get longer in the north hemisphere for the next six months. Happy Yalda, the sun’s birthday 🌞

Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 21/12/2023

Congratulations to ECG members and their collaborators at the cognitive Neuroscience lab for winning the marshmallow problem contest at xmass party! Well done folks ;)

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Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

From October 2023: former intern Meera Ramadas is joining Daniela Vallentin's group at the MPl for Biological Intelligence, Munich on a collaborative comp. neuro. PhD with Jan Clemens in European Neuroscience Institute, Goettingen. She is part of the IMPRS for Biological Intelligence PhD program.

Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 06/12/2023

From Nov. 2023: M.Sc. student Kacper Ksiezak presented at Intl. Conf. on Complex Networks. @sfb1528.bsky.social with Sinz lab we show that a gated recurr neur net predicts a monkey's foraging choices by memorizing his posture. Even better when memorizing posture of human the monkey coordinated with

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Neda Shahidi @nedash.bsky.social · 05/12/2023

From October 2023: former research assistant Yuliya Badayeva joined Arnaud Krebs's group at European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, to start her PhD in molecular genomics.