A new study from Anthropic finds that gains in coding efficiency when relying on AI assistance did did not meet statistical significance; AI use noticeably degraded programmers’ understanding of what they were doing. Incredible.
I am very excited about this new preprint!
@likeajumprope.bsky.social presents an approach for charting growth velocity using normative models. It provides a fundamental framework for detecting individualised deviations from an assumed developmental trajectory. Enjoy!
arxiv.org/abs/2601.07591
Also out today in PNAS: Anwesha Das shows in this thorough paper that "micro-offline gains" in sequence learning do not reflect consolidation of a motor memory - they also happen in random sequences. With @eazanon.bsky.social and Max-Philip Stenner (Magdeburg).
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
... and a lifespan normative model of fractional anisotropy from Ramona Cirstian. An important contribution!
linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii...
A bit belated, but here are some new papers! first, a conceptual framework for modelling extremes in neuroimaging data
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Great work from the inimitable Charlotte Fraza!
Come work with us!
we are recruiting for a talented PhD candidate for a new project
www.radboudumc.nl/en/vacancies...
[🆕RESEARCH] Increasing vegetation cover by 10%, 20%, and 30% could lower the global population-weighted mean temperature during the #warm season. These reductions could prevent approximately 0.86, 1.02, and 1.16 million deaths—corresponding to 27.16%, 32.22%, and 36.66% of all heat-related deaths.
Very pleased to see this paper out! An analytical frameowrk for digital phenotyping data based on hidden Markov Models.
Great stuff from Imogen Leaning!
jmir.org/2025/1/e64007
2/ Our first speaker was Prof. André Marquand (@amarquand.bsky.social), who studies how environmental challenges affect mental health.
His talk reinforced that neuroscientists can also play a key role in researching impacts and effective ways to promote climate action engagement and policy-making! 🧠
In irony too funny for words, Anthropic asks that you please don’t use AI in your job application.
No, really!
open.substack.com/pub/garymarc...
A colleague today asked about Gaussian Processes on a sphere. Like spatial autocorrelation on the globe. I asked @avehtari.bsky.social. There are papers! This problem common enough to be worth having a case study I think?
(1) Theory doi.org/10.1007/s112...
(2) Application doi.org/10.48550/arX...
My impression of this action is that it is quite deliberately intended to sow chaos, doubt, and destruction.
wapo.st/4gfgcHQ
\subsection*{2} Suppose your colleague is interested in the causal effect of food $F$ on weight $W$. They run a linear regression of $W$ on $F$, $G$, and $A$. They report the following coefficients: \begin{verbatim} mean sd 5.5% 94.5% (Intercept) 4.06 0.44 3.37 4.76 F 2.51 1.48 0.15 4.87 G -0.61 0.16 -0.86 -0.35 A 0.39 0.24 0.00 0.77 \end{verbatim} They interpret the value 2.51 (0.15--4.87) as the causal effect of adding a unit of food to a territory. What is wrong with your colleague's reasoning? What is a better estimate of the causal effect of food? Why does your estimate and your colleagues' differ so much?
Week 3 homework for my stats course. "Causal salad": adding measurements to a regression until something is significant and interpreting every coefficient as a total causal effect. This is rarely sensible. (All course materials here github.com/rmcelreath/s...)
New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Hossein Rafipoor, Saad Jbabdi, et al:
Hierarchical modelling of crossing fibres in the white matter
direct.mit.edu/imag/article...
“LLMs amplify existing security risks and introduce new ones”
Even Microsoft sees it.
New paper at arXiv, discussed briefly below.
open.substack.com/pub/garymarc...
🎉 eLife is pleased to announce Timothy Behrens (@behrenstimb.bsky.social) as our new Editor-in-Chief!
A distinguished neuroscientist and long-time supporter, Tim will lead our efforts in transforming research communication for all.
lol, a clip of a Tesla's vision system trying to understand a train
labyrinth.zone/notice/Aq5V7...
“𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵, 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝘀𝗮𝗻𝗱”
Should also mention: associated OSF resource osf.io/d9r3x/ with links to code & demo videos. Again, huge tks to contributors incl. @oesteban.bsky.social @amarquand.bsky.social @engra.me @clarekelly.bsky.social @jivr.bsky.social @christiangaser.bsky.social
The projected burden of dementia in the United States
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The man in charge of social media platforms used by billions should show some moral courage, writes @jemima.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/682c...
New paper! This is a very elegant way to assess longitudinal change against normative models estimated cross-sectionally! Great stuff from Barbora Rehák Bučková!
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
Calibration “resolves” epistemic uncertainty by giving predictions that are indistinguishable from the true probabilities. Why is this still unsatisfying?
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/12/31/c...
o3, #AGI, the art of the demo, and what you can expect in 2025
"I saw zero evidence that o3 could work reliably in open-ended domains... The most important question wasn’t really addressed." @garymarcus.bsky.social
garymarcus.substack....
#generativeAI
2-dimensional projections of the Rössler attractor and the Lorenz system
🛠️ November's most-read Tools and Resources paper presents a new method to identify dynamic causal interactions in complex systems: https://buff.ly/3Zldxpt
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