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Nico Schuck

@nicoschuck.bsky.social
2.3K followers 643 following 204 posts

Cognitive Neuroscience Prof at Uni Hamburg interested in algorithms of the mind. / Views my own. schucklab.gitlab.io

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Reposted by Nico Schuck
Karl Deisseroth @deisseroth.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Thank you to everyone sharing in this moment! I’m so grateful to all my trainees & collaborators… dlab.stanford.edu/group-members (pic: Peter and I together in 2017) Reading for all those asking: for technical details: dlab.stanford.edu for everyone: deisseroth.org/projections
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Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Excited to be launching our new PhD program in Minds and Machines at UCL with co-Directors Tali Sharot and @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social To apply, find out more here: www.ucl.ac.uk/brain-scienc... Our launch event is on Nov 10th, with a cracking lineup of speakers: luma.com/cikzcth0
lnkd.in
LinkedIn
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
over 200 papers and 14 books in one year is so obviously insane that it almost hides the problem. what scares me are labs that now publish 23 instead of 12 pre AI.
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Lilian Weber @lilweb.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
✨New PhD Position!✨ Come and work with us on understanding cognition with a mix of cognitive modelling and ultrasound neuromodulation! More info on the lab & position: mic-lab.de/positions/ph... Official job ad: tinyurl.com/miclab-phd 🙏Please RT - deadline is Oct 14 ‼️
mic-lab.de
Research Associate (m/f/d): Models, Interventions, and Cognition — MIC-Lab
Models and interventions of cognition.
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Ondrej Zika @ondrejzika.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
🚨 💫 💥 Interested in PhD / Postdoc opportunities in computational psychiatry / cognitive neuroscience? My lab at University College Dublin 🇮🇪 is currently accepting expressions of interest for internally funded PhD/Postdoc applications for positions starting in September 2027 (!). 1/
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
the only question is (a) very good, (b) very good to excellent, or (c) excellent?
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
congratulations 🍾🎉🎊!
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
there is a 2013(!) study that estimated 550 working years of researchers' time was spent in australia alone: bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/5/... and the EU has recognized already 10 years ago how much the low funding rates cost universities: www.timeshighereducation.com/news/billion...
timeshighereducation.com
Billions lost in bids to secure EU research funding
Study highlights the true cost of low success rates in Horizon 2020
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Reposted by Nico Schuck
Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 22/09/2026
So… we just found out that GPT sol can complete a complex online behavioral/cognitive study producing nearly indistinguishable behavior and subjective reports… right as we are about to launch. Is this doomsday for online cognitive testing?
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I think to some degree there is a race of who will flood the system in the most shameless way with cheap papers and grants (not naming names) there are lots of useful uses of AI but people claiming credit for mostly AI generated stuff should be penalized IMO. and/or we separate AI from human science
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
yes, will we be able to adapt the system to make it work again or have to switch to a whole new way of funding? my main worry would be too that nepotism, matthew effects and biases get stronger without centralized and transparent grant peer review. There are interesing lottery ideas though
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
i wonder whether LLMs will break or reinforce the Matthew effect in science 🤔
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
2023: 8,039 proposals 2024: 10,360 proposals 2025: 17,066 proposals 2026: 21,627 proposals Something's gotta give
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Great thread by @meganakpeters.bsky.social on the AI letter by mathematicians that is relevant for neuro too. AI is clearly useful, but our culture of intellectual debate & training risks being steamrolled by companies whose goals are misaligned with ours. Science has to stay a public good
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Wow, quite stunning if true
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Enny van Beest @ennyvb.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Textbook: tracking position during navigation is primarily the job of the hippocampus. Recent findings suggest a more complicated story. Recording >20k neurons brainwide, we indeed find spatial representations in every region! With @kenneth-harris.bsky.social and @carandinilab.net
Brainwide representations of a virtual corridor
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tor @torwager.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
This book took about 10 years to write (or longer, depending on how you count)...I am fully on board with #SlowScience! mitpress.mit.edu/97802620450... Here are some tutorials that run example code in-browser, no back-end server or setup. #JupyterLite magic! torwager.github.io/elements-of...
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Thank you!
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Philipp Kanske @kanske.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
PostDoc job for MRI expert in our Neuroimaging Center in beautiful Dresden. Interested in imaging studies & integration of different neuroscience methods? Get in touch! - Thanks for sharing - @tudresden.bsky.social @biodgps-dgpa.bsky.social tu-dresden.de/vacancy/12956
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
wow indeed. the brain never ceases to boggle the mind.
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Helen Barron @helencbarron.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
***New preprint from the lab*** showing “Generative replay across hippocampal-neocortical circuits”. In sleep we show spiking sequences in V1 (sensory neocortex!) that represent information that has not been directly experienced www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @bndu.ox.ac.uk @ndcnoxford.bsky.social
biorxiv.org
Generative replay across hippocampal-neocortical circuits
To make flexible decisions, the brain needs to make inferences between events that were not directly experienced together. In sharp-wave ripple (SWR) events, during periods of rest and sleep, spiking ...
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
No auto mode is one thing we agreed on but I personally haven’t used pools of agents. Makes clear that we have to keep adapting, as the ground shifts quickly under our feet
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I do see benefits, but I also worry that human training will fall by wayside, and (as you say) also about handing access to fairly opaque private companies and a technology whose behavior we can’t fully predict or control
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
our policy was specifically a reaction agentic AI, which I think made AI orders of magnitude more significant for neuro. As many folks have documented you can run whole projects with it. but if we were to do this at scale it would have many implications
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I enjoyed writing this piece for The Transmitter. AI is a seismic change for science. What we make of it is up to us, but it’s a decision we can only make collectively. I hope more labs, and the field at large, will engage in finding a shared view of how we want to use AI.
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Alireza Modirshanechi @modirshanechi.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Excited to share that I'll be starting as a junior professor and Emmy Noether awardee at the University of Göttingen this October! 🥳 🚀 I'll be hiring #phd students and #postdoc across #machinelearning, #neuroscience and #cogsci: modirlab.github.io/open-positio... Please spread the word! 🙏
PhD ad informationPostdoc ad informationInformation about Göttingen and equal opportunities
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Reza Shadmehr @rezashadmehr.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
If an action results in error, each neuron requires an individualized teaching signal that guides change in its output. This is the credit assignment problem of learning. Are there neurons in the brain that can compute such a sophisticated teaching signal? Yes. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Climbing fibers encode the gradient of a loss function for the cerebellum
Neurons in the brain are often many synapses away from motoneurons, yet if a movement results in error, each distant neuron needs a teacher that considers its specific contribution to production of th...
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Aaron Sojourner @aaronsojourner.org · 25/07/2026
Admirable clarity @science.org
The Trump administration hates academic science funding, full stop. They hate where that money goes, and they hate who it goes to. They want to keep all that money for themselves, to hand out to favored cronies who can help them get elected and to steer yet more money and more power back into their hands.

That’s it. That’s the story
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Excited to see this paper on learning about how to learn out in eLIFE, spearheaded by Jonas Simoens and the team from Ghent incl @sebraem.bsky.social @pieterverbeke.bsky.social and Tom Verguts)
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Ghent Center for Cognitive Neuroscience @ghentccn.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Two time scales of adaptation in human learning rates doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
doi.org
Two time scales of adaptation in human learning rates
Humans adapt learning rates on both a fast and a slow time scale, and the central orbitofrontal cortex may represent the slow time scale.
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
he wrote down one of the earliest expressions of the idea that intelligence could exists outside of biological beings. check out the golden maidens, automatons who had "intelligence in their hearts". wrong organ + he thought it must come from god, but still.. useful narrative hook for students
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
sure, we cover that in the syllabus just didn't fit in there. not meant to be a full historical account. but you are right that I should take out LeNet and put this in there
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
yeah, I think it’s a fair point, although I am worried that the moment I put Leibniz in there someone will tell me it should be Newton :)
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
on the syllabus, just not this slide. will add! thank you
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
the intro is focussed on folks who have explicitly expressed ideas around implementing intelligence in machines. homer is just a useful anecdote to get students thinking about how radical the idea is. of course leipniz had a bigger impact than homer. but maybe should add him as basis of backprob …
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
of course not categorically! had to keep it stringent for time reasons but to be honest i am not aware of major influences. what are biggest ones i should look into / add?
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
any specific model / idea you think should be there?
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Fair point!
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Made this overview of the intellectual history leading up to today's LLMs for my course. Any "must-have" stepping stones I missed? #NeuroAI #compneurosky #neuroskyence
Timeline with important discoveries / ideas in the history leading up to  LMMs
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
📣Going to #cpconf? Come see @luiantaverra.bsky.social A2 Tue 9am, Bidirectional relationship between aversive beliefs + avoidance & its association with transdiagnostic symptoms @alexnitsch.bsky.social B43 Wed 3:15pm, The role of aversive replay in avoidance behaviors in psychiatric disorders
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
I'd love to!
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
+ the brain is dynamic, such that stable activity pattern are in fact a special case of self transitioning dynamics? That aside, I am fully on board with the idea that just because one particular form is dominantly reported in rodents, it's the most prominent phenomenon in humans too
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
True, physical spaces are special in that sense and have a limited number of transitions that are deterministic, while transitions in most other domains are probabilistic + complex (e.g. language). Still, saving and computing over temporal (or causal) transitions is worthwhile computationally
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Thanks for sharing this. Unfortunately our format had a very tight word and reference limit, so there were many things we sadly couldn't really engage with. Maybe we should have a longer discussion about this at some point.
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
F Moorman recently mentioned human recording data in our lab meeting that in his words indicated that reactivation is sequential, but the sequences didn't have any obvious relation to the stimulus relations
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
I fully agree with the broader point that the pure focus of rodent analogies has led us astray and to ignore the many significant differences. Part of why we wanted to write this. Sequentiality is interesting. Why do you think it's less sequential in humans?
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Good questions! I think planning would be distinct from retrieval but I agree that if-replay-then-retrieval is different from if-retrieval-then-replay. No1 seems less implausible because there is so much replay, and No2 is closer to what replay studies assume when asking subjs to retrieve
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Trends in Cognitive Sciences @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Online Now: What can we learn from studying replay in humans?
dlvr.it
What can we learn from studying replay in humans?
Noninvasive methods are making it possible to study neural replay in humans. Although focused on alignment with rodent findings, human research often tacitly assumes that replay is linked to conscious, deliberate thought. This assumption represents a missed opportunity to investigate the links between replay and consciousness, as well as cross-species differences more broadly.
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Anna Schapiro @annaschapiro.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Very excited to share our new review on C-HORSE, our model of the hippocampus! We think there is very encouraging alignment between C-HORSE proposals and the extant empirical literature, though we also note plenty of areas for further model development. royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...
royalsocietypublishing.org
Evidence for complementary learning systems within the hippocampus
Abstract. Decades of research have established the hippocampus as central to episodic memory, but growing evidence suggests that it also contributes to str
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
I think that’s absolutely possible, and an interesting empirical question. but “trigger” doesn’t mean that replay directly implements the conscious part, more like that it can (under some circumstances) lead to processes that become conscious.
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