iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Sophia Becker

Alexander van Meegen @avm.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Interested in multitasking RNNs from a theory perspective? Check out this preprint with the amazing @lpezon.bsky.social. TLDR: A low-rank / latent space approach to @lndriscoll.bsky.social & @sussillodavid.bsky.social style shared components. And a story starring solution space degeneracy.

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Reposted by Sophia Becker

Guillaume Bellec @bellecguill.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Accepted at ICML 2026. I am extremely proud of this work. Local learning is starting to work really well! The theoretical perspective of local learning minimizing an emergent global objective has been eye opening Congrats @zihan-wu.bsky.social and Ariane Delrocq! Great team

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Reposted by Sophia Becker

Zihan Wu @zihan-wu.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Can we match self-supervised backpropagation using local learning rules? We show it is possible in our new paper accepted by ICML. We achieve: 1. theoretical equivalence to BP in a controlled setup 2. new SOTA for local learning across image datasets 3. same performance as BP on multiple datasets

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Reposted by Sophia Becker

Laura Driscoll @lndriscoll.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

New job posting! If you're interested in working with our group, check it out. 3 year position (with possibility to extend) at >100k. alleninstitute.org/careers/jobs...

alleninstitute.org

Open Positions | Allen Institute

Build your career at the Allen Institute. Explore current job openings and find your place in a team driving some of the most ambitious open science in the world.

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Reposted by Sophia Becker

Shervin Safavi @neuroprinciplist.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

1/11 Happy to share our TICS paper on using the flexibility of one of the most basic cognitive functions, perception, to understand one of the most complex cognitive dysfunctions, psychiatric conditions (also my first formal work in computational psychiatry 🎉) 📄: www.cell.com/trends/cogni... 🧵 : 👇

cell.com

Perceptual multistability: a multifaceted window into brain dysfunctions

Perceptual multistability, observed across species and sensory modalities, offers valuable insights into numerous cognitive functions and dysfunctions. For instance, differences in temporal dynamics a...

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Reposted by Sophia Becker

GerstnerLab @gerstnerlab.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Ever heard of the lottery ticket hypothesis? Our new paper shows that lottery tickets are not a useful metaphor to explain the success of overparameterized neural networks - and suggests an alternative metaphor: escape dimensions

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Reposted by Sophia Becker

Flavio Martinelli @flavioh.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

NEW PAPER. Why do larger networks train better? "Because they contain more candidate *sub*networks that can learn the task" → lottery tickets This popular explanation uses an appealing but misleading metaphor🧵 We propose an intuitive alternative grounded in theory: escape dimensions

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Sophia Becker @sobeckerneuro.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Incredibly grateful to @cmiehl.bsky.social and @gjorjulijana.bsky.social for their thoughtful and spot-on Preview "Novelty beyond counting" of our recent work in Neuron with @modirshanechi.bsky.social and @gerstnerlab.bsky.social! 🧠✨ It's a real honor 🙏 www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

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Reposted by Sophia Becker

Roxana Zeraati @roxana-zeraati.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Some incredibly exciting news that still feels a bit surreal: I am starting my research group @mpicybernetics.bsky.social! The best part? We are hiring at all levels! Curious about the science we plan to tackle, read along :) #NeuroSky

An illustration of different species, from worms to humans, foraging, indicating the main topic of our research group.

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Reposted by Sophia Becker

EPFL Brain Mind Institute @epfl-brainmind.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Novelty is not just about whats new, but also what feels new given past experience. New study from Sophia Becker in Wulfram Gerstner’s @epfl-brainmind.bsky.social lab posits a model showing how similarity between familiar and novel stimuli shapes exploration and learning - doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

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Sophia Becker @sobeckerneuro.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

So excited to see this finally out!! 🤩🎉 A big thank you to our reviewers for their helpful feedback and to @modirshanechi.bsky.social and Wulfram Gerstner for the wonderful collaboration!

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Reposted by Sophia Becker

EPFL Brain Mind Institute @epfl-brainmind.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

How does circuit structure shape neural activity? The lab of @epfl-brainmind.bsky.social Prof. Wulfram Gerstner shows that distinct neural circuits can produce similar low-dimensional dynamics, while retaining clear signatures in single neuron and population activity data: doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

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Reposted by Sophia Becker

Alireza Modirshanechi @modirshanechi.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

So happy to see this work out! 🥳 Huge thanks to our two amazing reviewers who pushed us to make the paper much stronger. A truly joyful collaboration with @lucasgruaz.bsky.social, @sobeckerneuro.bsky.social, and Johanni Brea! 🥰 Tweeprint on an earlier version: bsky.app/profile/modi... 🧠🧪👩‍🔬

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Reposted by Sophia Becker

Ben Eysenbach @ben-eysenbach.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Excited to share new work led by @vivekmyers.bsky.social and @crji.bsky.social that proves you can learn to reach distant goals by solely training on nearby goals. The key idea is a new form of invariance. This invariance implies generalization w.r.t. the horizon.

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Sophia Becker @sobeckerneuro.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Teaser: We also developed a new experimental protocol to systematically test the effects of similarity-based generalization on novelty responses!

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Sophia Becker @sobeckerneuro.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

We show how novelty definitions can be extended to account for generalization due to similarities between familiar and novel stimuli. Applying our model to open data sets, we show how neural novelty responses and novelty-driven exploration in animals are modulated by similarities between stimuli.

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Sophia Becker @sobeckerneuro.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Stoked to be at RLDM! Curious how novelty and exploration are impacted by generalization across similar stimuli? Then don't miss my flash talk in the PIMBAA workshop (tmr at 10:30, E McNabb Theatre) or stop by my poster tmr (#74)! Looking forward to chat 🤩 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.org

Representational similarity modulates neural and behavioral signatures of novelty

Novelty signals in the brain modulate learning and drive exploratory behaviors in humans and animals. While the perceived novelty of a stimulus is known to depend on previous experience, the effect of...

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