Harsha Gurnani
Neural dynamics, control, learning. Love talking about the brain, math, poetry, science+arts! Striving for kindness. (She/her)
🌎 Postdoc @ NYU (Prev: UW, UCL, IISc)
🤓 harshagurnani.github.io
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniNew paper out at PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Revisiting the high-dimensional geometry of population responses in the visual cortex with @jpillowtime.bsky.social. The review took forever because a reviewer was doubtful our new estimator can infer eigenvalues beyond the rank of the data! (1/6)
- I truly enjoyed writing this profile. Eva's personal trajectory from the clinic to academia highlights the ongoing importance of《fundamental science》for tackling mental health and addiction. Science enables the shift from "labels" to "mechanisms" and leads to more tailored, powerful approaches.
- Our next profile is here! Dr. Eva Pool studies the role of affect in learning and decision making. Follow the link below to listen and learn more 💜 www.storiesofwin.org/profiles/202... #StoriesOfWiN #WomenInNeuroscience
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniThank you for the great summary, @thetransmitter.bsky.social, and the shout-outs from scientists we admire. There is so much we don’t know about how sex hormones modulate behavior and we’ll keep exploring!
- “It’s giving mechanistic insight into how estrogen modulates reinforcement learning—all the way down to the molecular mechanism,” says Ilana Witten. By @avaskham.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/sex-hormones...
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- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniNote: this has a computational scientist track! It’s for you, too, math nerds!
- Reposted by Harsha Gurnanipaper🚨 When we learn a category, do we learn the structure of the world, or just where to draw the line? In a cross-species study, we show that humans, rats & mice adapt optimally to changing sensory statistics, yet rely on fundamentally different learning algorithms. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniWho wore it better? Our new paper shows that rat OFC supports Bayesian inference of hidden states! With neural correlates of inferred state transitions at the level of single neurons and population-level latent factors. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniThrilled to share our new paper, out now in @natneuro.nature.com, uncovering how estradiol, the most potent estrogen, modulates reinforcement learning and reward prediction errors across biological levels. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #blueprint 1/7
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniI've been waiting some years to make this joke and now it’s real: I conned somebody into giving me a faculty job! I’m starting as a W1 Tenure-Track Professor at Goethe University Frankfurt in a week (lol), in the Faculty of CS and Math and I'm recruiting PhD students 🤗
- I love watching mentees transform wonderment into knowledge & growth, it reminds me of our collective responsibility & power 👩🏻🏫 Also surreal that it was 10y that my UG experience was transformed by amazing, kind mentors like Eve, Rishi and Tim 😊 @timothyoleary.bsky.social @cnl-mbu-iisc.bsky.social
- Job post alert!👩🔬 Postdoctoral fellow in CompNeuro/ML in the Artificial and Biological Computation lab at NYU (csavin.wixsite.com/savinlab). Exciting opening in the Data and Theory team in the new Simons Collaboration in Ecological Neuroscience! www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/04/24/s... #neuroskyence
- Application: To apply please email csavin@nyu.edu: - your CV - contact details of at least 2 references - a brief (one page maximum) description of why are you interested in the position and how your expertise fits the call. Or Job Ad here: www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/deta... #neuroskyence
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniOf potential interest to those keen on motor control and/or multi-task networks. Congrats to Elom and Eric. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniExcited to announce that my first postdoc paper is now online! Links: www.nature.com/articles/s41... rdcu.be/eAcN7 In it, we examine the perennial question: what changes in the brain when learning a new motor skill? Read more below to find out 👇
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniExcited to share this profile + interview with Dr. Emily Jacobs! Amazing work on human precision brain imaging across hormonal fluctuations, and such an inspiring story! I had such a great time interviewing her!
- Our latest profile just dropped! Dr. Emily Jacobs (@emilyjacobs.bsky.social) studies how hormonal fluctuations influence the brain. Follow the link below to listen to the full interview! www.storiesofwin.org/profiles/202... #WomenInNeuroscience #StoriesOfWiN
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- Reposted by Harsha Gurnani📣 We are expanding! Repost 🙏🏽 - Postdoc (funded by @simonsfoundation.org grant on synchronisation between cognitive representations and stepping) - Project Associates - Create your role! (Reach out if you are keen on these topics and these roles do not define you 👀🤗) www.neuroact.in
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- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniWhen neurons change, but behavior doesn’t: Excitability changes driving representational drift New preprint of work with Christian Machens: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniThinking of applying to US-based Ph.D. programs in neuroscience, psychology, or cognitive science? We’ve got your back! NYU’s Application Support Group is a student-led, free mentorship program offering 1-on-1 support and guidance. Apply now! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
- Reposted by Harsha Gurnani📣 Heads-up that our amazing dept (Berkeley Psych) is anticipating hiring *two* TT Asst Profs this Fall, under the themes of (1) Social & Personality Psychology, and (2) Biological Basis of Behavior. Official job ads coming soon... Send qs for (1) to Iris Mauss/Serena Chen, (2) to Linda Wilbrecht
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- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniNew #NeuroAI #compneurosky preprint! To better understand how target-directed learning works in the brain, we sought to engineer an artificial neural network capable of solving complex image classification tasks that comprises only experimentally-supported biological building blocks. (1/15)
- Cellular and subcellular specialization enables biology-constrained deep learning www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniDavid Hocker’s paper about compositional pretraining for RNNs that efficiently produces animal-like behaviors! Modeling cognitive tasks in RNNs requires thinking about latent abilities that animals bring to an experiment. Funded by NIH/CRCNS. www.nature.com/articles/s42...
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniDuring Q&A, whenever someone asks a question about our "mice."
- A great interview of Eve, who is a remarkable person; a deep commitment to the pursuit of truth and scientific integrity, passion about mentorship of the next generation of scientists, and advice that's always direct, unabashed and insightful!
- Check out our latest profile! Dr. Eve Marder studies the stability and flexibility of neural circuit function. Follow the link below to learn more! www.storiesofwin.org/profiles/202... #StoriesofWiN #WomenInNeuroscience #WomenInNeuro
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniNew work by @liushuze.bsky.social establishes an empirical link between policy complexity and neural dimensionality: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- This can be such an amazing resource! Stories about how the world around is shaped and improved through scientific research. Stories we can share with the broader public, friends and family. And we (researchers) can all use the positive boost, feel that we're part of something bigger 😊 Contribute!
- we're crowd-sourcing a searchable repository of tangible benefits stemming from federally-funded research. Come enjoy the great stories; or send in an idea; or volunteer to join the team. publicusaresearchbenefits.com please share and re-share so we get more great stories in there!
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniGave a talk at my parents’ retirement community to describe how science is done, and what is at stake. There was a ton of interest, and anyone can do this. Get the word out about how science affects everyone. I’m happy to share slides with anyone who asks- just get in touch! youtu.be/BY_SFgi-Cig
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniThe Spencer Foundation is offering rapid response bridge funding for those who lost NSF research grants. www.spencer.org/grant_types/...
- Reposted by Harsha Gurnani15 positions of Fellow in AI in Paris (teaching + research positions) Required field(s) of studies: mathematics, computer science, physics, astrophysics, chemistry, life sciences, cognitive sciences, etc. prairie-institute.fr/fellow-in-ar...
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniWell the NIH has cancelled the Women's Health Initiative, the largest study of women in history It has been running continuously since 1991 and has provided massive key knowledge about diseases in women Unreal www.science.org/content/arti...
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- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniExcited to share our new pre-print on bioRxiv, in which we reveal that feedback-driven motor corrections are encoded in small, previously missed neural signals.
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniA little while ago, my parents' cat Bridget went missing. As the weeks dragged on, they became extremely worried. My dad devised a way to distract himself: he began to paint Bridget's adventures, imagining her travelling through time and popping up in some of art and music's most iconic scenes.
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniNeuropeeps! Is there a list somewhere of the intramural neuroscience researchers @ NIH who have lost their jobs? If not, could you reply to this thread or hit me up on Signal (tverstynen.64) if you happen to know of specific people? Please boost if you don’t mind.
- Due to a small accident, I couldn't present my talk at the Control workshop yesterday but I'll be talking about it today at the @cosynemeeting.bsky.social Learning Fast and Slow workshop (Mali I) in 40 min, at 10.05 am ! #cosyne2025
- Lastly, I will be presenting my recent work on identifying dynamical constraints on learning in feedback-driven circuits, on Day 1 of the #cosyne2025 workshop "Dynamics of brain computations through the lens of control theory" - super stoked to see you all in Montreal!
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- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniNew lab paper led by @justfineneuro.bsky.social "Complementary roles for hippocampus and anterior cingulate in composing continuous choice”, now on bioRxiv! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Super excited about our 2-day @cosynemeeting.bsky.social workshop on learning that pays tribute to the diversity of timescales, teaching signals and circuits that work together to shape adaptive behaviors, and where we hope to bridge insights from behavior, dynamics, and learning rules! #cosyne2025
- With a really excellent group of theorists and experimentalists we will 1) think about normative principles for distributed learning, and 2) discuss what we can - and cannot - learn from data. We have a very exciting lineup of speakers, with many ECRs!
- Visa/ green card holders in the US who had planned to go to @cosynemeeting.bsky.social , what are your current thoughts about leaving and reentering the US / has your university issued any new directive? I'm happy to dm/ chat over Signal too. #cosyne25 #neuroskyence
- But also Jake Sacks @jsacks.bsky.social, Matt Golub and I are organizing a #cosyne25 workshop on learning across timescales! Will share the stellar list of speakers in another post but we have everything from behaviour, networks to teaching signals, data and theory! learning-fast-and-slow.github.io
- Reposted by Harsha Gurnani1/7 Our paper on individual variability in decision-making is finally out in @nature.com! Inspired by the classic work by Mante and Sussillo, we trained many rats to solve context-dependent decision-making, and we found that different brains use different neural mechanisms to solve the same task!
- Reposted by Harsha Gurnani"Evidence suggests the local recurrent network encodes the structure of natural sensory input. & that it does so via active filtering, transforming network inputs to boost those associated w/ nat'l sensation" Amidst <waves hands> all this, I have a new review article that... arxiv.org/abs/2501.1...
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- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniExcited to share our latest story! We found disentangled memory representations in the hippocampus that generalized across time and environments, despite the seemingly random drift and remapping of single cells. This code enabled the transfer of prior knowledge to solve new tasks
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniAre you a neuroscience postdoc interested in an academic career? Apply (by 05/31/2025) for this invited seminar at MIT's Brain and Cognitive Sciences department! Applications are reviewed by postdoc, keeping in mind the importance of varied contributions to the scientific community!
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniAnne Carpenter writes about the science cuts: “this is like suddenly announcing that you will pay for doctors and nurses but not the hospital building they work in” for the LaPorte Herald Dispatch in IN 🌽 🧪🧬🔬🏠 @drannecarpenter.bsky.social www.lpheralddispatch.com/opinion/gues...
- Reposted by Harsha GurnaniI am very proud to announce that my PhD paper finally came out in Cell! In this *very* collaborative study, we develop and release a deep-learning approach to predict neuron type identity from their electrical signature. doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... 1/16 🧵
