Reinforcement learning of state representation and value: the power of random feedback and biological constraints biorxiv.org/cgi/content/sh… #biorxiv_neursci

I'm excited to share that Rice is hiring TWO new faculty members in Cognitive Neuroscience (1 Assistant level, 1 Associate/Full)! Asst ad: apply.interfolio.com/153086 Assoc/full ad: apply.interfolio.com/153384 Please share, and reach out if you have questions!

When you fail to perform at your best right when it matters the most, what's going on in your brain? We can now provide an explanation: Exceptionally high stakes interfere with motor preparation. We can see this in motor cortex. Next up: finding out why. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

ahhh it's happening...! first day :)

I'm thrilled to share that I'm joining BCM Department of Neuroscience as an asst prof starting Jan 2025! My group is broadly interested in how biological and artificial neural systems learn and adapt. We're looking for researchers at all levels to join us in this exciting endeavor. Stay tuned!

My 2nd to last #neuroscience paper will appear UniReps !! 🧠🧠 Maximizing Neural Regression Scores May Not Identify Good Models of the Brain 🧠🧠 w/ @KhonaMikail Mitchell Ostrow Brando Miranda Sanmi Koyejo Answering a puzzle 2 years in the making openreview.net/forum?id=vbtj0… 1/12

I'm hiring a postdoc to work with me on problems related to meta-learning and probabilistic representation learning in the brain. Perks: i) the amazing research community at BCM Department of Neuroscience and Rice Neuroengineering Initiative. ii) Houston food is DELICIOUS (and cheap) jobs.bcm.edu/job/Postdoctor…

I am recruiting graduate students for my lab McGill University for admission in Fall 2025! Get in touch if you're interested in how brain circuits implement distributed computation, including dopamine-based distributed RL and probabilistic representations.

How can a single cell learn without a brain or nervous system? We explore this in my new preprint with Wallace Marshall! We discovered that central features of learning in single cells can be accounted for by a model based on receptor inactivation bit.ly/3CDukfS 🧵 1/n

Apropos of never ending discussions about whether ANNs are "good" models of the nervous system, here is a slide I present to masters students showing a network that is found in motor control circuits *across phyla* (that's pretty ubiquitous!) I ask them to guess what it does...

What hides in the complex responses of prefrontal cortex neurons? How does this fascinating brain area implement advanced cognitive functions? Find this out in our manuscript, now published in #ScienceAdvances science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… [1/14]

Andrew Pruszynski In our preprint we show that expectations about future sensory inputs shape neural population dynamics in motor circuits, supporting the idea that movement is governed by the sophisticated manipulation of sensory feedback. biorxiv.org/content/10.110… 2/

We've posted a new paper about how to speed up statistical methods for analyzing multi-area recordings by orders of magnitude: arxiv.org/abs/2412.16773 This work was led by Evren Gokcen, with Anna Jasper (Einstein), Adam Kohn (Einstein), and Christian Machens (Champalimaud).