I don’t know if you saw the MASSIVE news announced by @erc.europa.eu today: from now on, if you get a B at step 1 you are eligible to apply at N+3(!!!) years. Say you got a B in STG2026 step 1, you thought you could apply in STG2028, but no: only in STG2029! erc.europa.eu/news-events/...
New preprint! 🧠
How do RNNs learn abstract rules from sequences, independent of specific stimuli?
By Vezha Boboeva, with Alberto Pezzotta & George Dimitriadis
"From sequences to schemas: low-rank recurrent dynamics underlie abstract relational representations"
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
New preprint 🥳
Gamma secretase isnt a single enzyme, multiple GSEC exist depending on which subunits are incorporated into the complex. We made PSEN1 & PSEN2 knockouts to study the impact of different GSEC in neurons & microglia
Led by @celarber.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Random neuroscience trainee tip: If you struggle to keep track of rostral vs caudal, remember that rostral rhymes with nostril.
Super excited to see the first paper from my PhD out! 🐭 Very satisfying to get to build an interpretable model of how the brain does a thing. A nice palette cleanser in the current sea of LLMs and deep ML.
Haha you are on bluesky!!!
This is the most insider shade ever and I’m here for it. #wormFly4pres2026🪱🪰
The cool thing is she found that this works best by combining two signals: what we 'see' (features of the environment) and what 'happens' (outcomes of our actions).
Together, these allow stable context inference and flexible behaviour even when information is weak or ambiguous!
She asked: how do we figure out what “situation” we’re in when it isn’t obvious? Answer: The brain has to infer hidden context from incomplete or noisy information — and use that to decide what to do next.
Huge congratulations to Jes (not on Bsky) for her paper in @plos.org Computational Biology! A really elegant modelling study on how the brain discovers hidden structure and uses it to guide behaviour. @uclnpp.bsky.social @ucllifesciences.bsky.social 🧪 📈 🧠 journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
*** 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!
Big changes - wording is a bit ambiguous as to whether these will be peer reviewed..? Hopefully! - experimental medicine and discovery science considered together and funded from the same 'bucket' is a touch scary for the discovery types!
#neuroskyence 🧠 🧪 📈
Early life isolation reduces excitability in the vH→PFC pathway and disrupts dimension-based learning.
A hierarchical reinforcement learning model captures these behavioural differences, and a human analogue of the task shows comparable effects.
Come by and chat!
cartoon of a mouse choosing different options
We use a tweaked version of the mouse attentional set-shifting task that highlights dimension learning and generalisation.
Mice learn which abstract stimulus dimension (odours/textures) predicts reward across multiple exemplars, and we probe this by asking how they adapt when the dimension changes.
Another poster today at #cosyne26 (2-112)!
@rowanboard shows how early life social isolation alters dimension-based learning, cognitive flexibility, and the ventral hippocampus–PFC circuit.
Great collaboration with @jonroiser.bsky.social linking mouse and human versions of the task!
Fitzcarraldo
Can this be a solution?
Even though transition statistics are flat, hippocampal population activity reflects the underlying community structure, and this representation emerges over learning.
Come by the poster if you’re interested in structure learning, hippocampus, or latent state representations! #neuroskyence 🧪 🧠 📈
community graph structure
The poster builds on the temporal community structure paradigm originally introduced by @annaschapiro.bsky.social
We adapted it to a 15-odour odour graph to ask whether mice learn the latent community structure, and how hippocampal activity reflects that organisation.
Poster tonight at #cosyne26 (1-079)!
@wanqingjiang.bsky.social & @noehamou.bsky.social show that mice learn hidden community structure in a 15-odour graph even when transition statistics are flat.
Fun collaboration with @saxelab.bsky.social that started with East London coffees ☕!
Yep I have increasingly been using text to speech apps and listening to my writing on the commute - amazingly effective at catching my drivel!
Super cool paper on human hippocampus in a non spatial planning task - congrats!
I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to
New preprint from the lab on synapse development in the nascent neocortical hierarchy!
Using mice that label MAGUK proteins developed by Seth Grant we find key differences in the laminar maturation of association and sensory motor cortices, including delayed, cortex-wide maturation of L1 synapses.
I'm a bit late with this, but awesome to see it out in the wild! A real tour de force from @dozenoaks.bsky.social @timcraggs.bsky.social An amazing example of why we need to think more about flexibility in our biological questions! www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
I really hope at the very least they let unsuccessful applications this round reapply...!
currently trying this... feeling the burn! as i picked the semester with all the grant deadlines!
Some initial reactions to the 'published on a Sunday afternoon' letter from the CEO of UKRI. 🧵
www.ukri.org/news/open-le...
i answer my phone as 'bouquet residence'... wow that is an old reference...
