Dendrites!

New preprint with @sevberg.bsky.social! We map Hopfield-like binary networks onto spiking networks with dendrites … and it works! Same memory capacity, bigger basins of attraction, plus selective recall through dendritic gating, and more. How? Dendrites! See below.

*** New paper from the lab in Nature Comms !! *** “Noradrenaline causes a spread of association in the hippocampal cognitive map” by the amazing @reneecabbage.bsky.social in collab. w labs of Jill O’Reilly, Will Clarke, and modeling from Prakriti Parthasarathy and @tpvogels.bsky.social, see below!

Nothing Compares to Vogel’s. YouTube video by Vogel's NZ

youtu.be/QFUz4RFUy8Q?...

Most of us are familiar with the nightingale's song, but did you know there's more to it than just a melody?

Read more: doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

@danielavallentin.bsky.social @tpvogels.bsky.social @mpiforbi.bsky.social

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This paper shows alignment between LLMs and brain data is outperformed by a null model. More evidence for the argument I've been making in talks lately that we shouldn't believe any computational paper that puts less effort into null than main model.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is such a cool idea! Not long term "networks" of young profs that create and cement in in-groups and out-groups, but summer schools, tailored to the acute needs of the young PI. Transient, but tailored, tidal and totally timeous, too. Terrific. Try today!

Nothing Compares to Vogel’s. YouTube video by Vogel's NZ

youtu.be/QFUz4RFUy8Q?...

Interplay between syllable duration and pitch during whistle matching in wild nightingales During complex vocal interactions, different features of acoustic stimuli are integrated to produce appropriate vocal responses,1 such as copying soun…

...in which @danielavallentin.bsky.social shows: vogels match rivals’ whistles, imitating pitch + duration. W'sm, a vogelsmodel model reveals hierarchical organisation of vogelsongs: Duration constrains pitch, a trade-off. Not all vogels, just nightingales.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Deadline for poster submissions in Jan 27!! That totally escaped me!

Excited to see the paper fully published. It's an important milestone for training SNNs with exact gradients, replacing our earlier tricks of a "delay line augmentation" to capture temporal relationships. Delays can now be learnt alongside weights naturally. Amazing work @mbalazs98.bsky.social !

The only solace (in hindsight) is that I wouldn't have wanted to have worked in that f__ed up place, anyway. :P And so don't my peops, respectively, in future hindsight, probably, ....but in the moment, WHY?

13 yrs ago some crusty prof asked me if I were "able to teach quantum chromo dynamics" during a faculty interview, as a means to disqualify me (his preferred candidate got the job, surprise!). These days, I am subjugated vicariously, when my postdocs experience the same BS. WTAF. So infuriating.

Last of my fave books back on a shelf, after 5 years in a box. I wouldn’t have thought it takes a full grant cycle to move but here we are. And there’s still more boxes. Of garbage. Mostly. But could not be happier to have the books back

Inhibitory Plasticity Balances Excitation and Inhibition in Sensory Pathways and Memory Networks Plasticity at inhibitory synapses maintains balanced excitatory and inhibitory synaptic inputs at cortical neurons.

"Spiking Networks Hate It! Find Out the One Plasticity Trick They Don’t Want You to Know! Never stabilise models by hand again." - I woke up thinking we missed an opportunity with the title of this one. :/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Also: It snowed in Vienna, 10cm white fluffies! Happy Sunday!

...and when I say @worldwideneuro.bsky.social, I really mean @bozelosp.bsky.social, obvs. Also, ...there is an all new front end for worldwideneuro coming soon. Stay tuned!

The State of Neuroscience 2025 The Transmitter presents a portrait of the field through four lenses: its focus, its output, its people and its funding.

Here is the product of a collab between @thetransmitter.bsky.social, @worldwideneuro.bsky.social & @moritzstefaner.bsky.social A portrait of the #StateofNeuro 2025: Text mining of (publicly available) neuro resources: Easy in concept, tricky in realisation, made possible by @simonsfoundation.org 🙏

I am very busy. I only post when it's urgent. Also I didn't know there was a weekly quota. Can I have this one count for next week?

Too late. He does not accept your apology.

I just found this stub in a jacket that I guess I have not worn in twenty three years? 12 bucks for Lali Puna, sweat and spit and all, at the (tiny) Middle East downstairs on Mass Ave. Those were the days. So so good.

Maybe check out the associated website. icg-explorer.org. I know I know, it's not fully integrated with ICG1, but these things are difficult.

Congratulations Juan! Exciting news!

...which is to say, maybe peops *use* the paper and page, but forget to cite, 'cuz it's so early in the scientific process? Anyway, the old & *new* work, in which we compare the line-by-line code tons of models, & rewrite them in a unified expression makes me so happy. Check it out: icg-explorer.org

Some addendum here. The '17 elife paper only has 43 citations in 8 years :( but the associated ionchannelmodels.org had 900+ unique visitors in 2024. Some 180 of them used the "compare ion channel models" function, pretty deep into the page. Every two days someone used a service we didn't advertise!

What Americans Die from?

And what the media reports on...

Our World in Data ourworldindata.org/does-the-new...

The working title of this project was “super models”, but we chickened out in carrying that terminology through. We were worried anyone was gonna think we were making fun of human supermodels, or worse, ion channels!! And we weren’t sure blue steel was the right association for a CA++ channel…

An ion channel omnimodel for standardized biophysical neuron modelling Biophysical neuron modeling is an indispensable tool in neuroscience research, with the combination of diverse ion channel kinetics and morphologies being used to explain various single-neuron propert...

“Mapping ion channel function” doi.org/10.7554/eLif... isn’t exactly a citation slayer, but it’s still one of my favourites (& my first independent project). Today we push pt 2, where we trace code origin & unite almost all channel models in a common expression. Boom! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

SNCF's half hearted effort to support international night trains in danger of hitting the buffers - Jon Worth In December 2023 the Paris-Berlin night train re-started after a 9 year hiatus. Operated as a Nighjet service by ÖBB, SNCF provided motive power for the train from Mannheim to Paris. They even put SNC...

No more Paris-Wien/Berlin night trains

"Die ÖBB bedauern, dass nach dem Rückzug der französischen Partner, die beiden Nachtzugverbindungen ab 14. Dez 2025 nicht mehr angeboten werden können." - SNCF, this is you presse-oebb.at/news-oebb-be...

My analysis in English:
jonworth.eu/sncfs-half-h...

"How many disco balls have you purchased in your life time?"

ALT text: A UMAP representation of a single cell RNAseq dataset from the Drosophila ventral nerve cord as well as images of the Drosophila nerve cord connectome and different stages of fly development.

Neuronal diversity is written in transcriptional codes 🧬. But what is the logic of these codes that define cell types and wiring patterns?
To find out we built a #scRNAseq developmental atlas of the Drosophila nerve cord and linked it to the #connectome 🪰🧠
#preprint thread ⬇️1/8