Joao Barbosa
INSERM group leader @ Neuromodulation Institute and NeuroSpin (Paris) in computational neuroscience.
How and why are computations enabling cognition distributed across the brain?
Expect neuroscience and ML content.
jbarbosa.org
- New Journal Club: Neural manifolds are maturing from visualization trick to biological claim. But if population activity lives on low-dimensional manifolds, what constrains the geometry?
- A blind person recovered low vision within a few days of being implanted with a Utah array and receiving electrical stimulation in the visual cortex. An unexpected and exciting discovery by @umh.es researchers 👀🧠 doi.org/10.1093/brai...
- So much shit on this world, we need a palate/timeline cleanser, and annual listening of one of the best live performances I have ever witnessed. AMENRA live at Ancienne Belgique www.youtube.com/live/uZrFKD0...
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View full threadFYI these are legendary US bro hardcore bands I seem to always enjoy 😁 I'll check the band. Never heard of them.
- Ok I like it.
- This show is still one of their best indeed. Amerna live really has therapeutic effects, already looking forward to this year's!
- I agree. Their music expresses pain (Colin v.E.'s words) which is cathartic in a way. At the same time you can achieve a similar catharsis, albeit without the emotional nuance, by being pummeled in the mosh pit during Madball or Terror.
- Final paper of my PhD 🤗 www.nature.com/articles/s44... There is growing interest in how cognitive control may improve value-based decision making. However, we find that a recent paper overestimated the role of control in their task, leading to erroneous interpretations of dACC recordings.
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- Anyone got an example of an academic who has positioned themselves a public intellectual who hasn’t turned out to be a hypocrite, a charlatan, or a pedo-friend?
- @seanmcarroll.bsky.social, @lisafeldmanbarrett.com, @michaelemann.bsky.social, @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social, @carlbergstrom.com, @erictopol.bsky.social, @sheril.bsky.social, @alisongopnik.bsky.social, @anilseth.bsky.social, @astrokatie.com - all examples of public intellectuals with integrity afaik.
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- UKRI will more than double its AI research budget to £397m. The R&D+compute budget of OpenAI = $8.5b. A single company has nearly 20 times the research budget of an entire G7 country. The lesson is simple: we can't chase the same research goals. We need to take risks that VC-backed companies won't.
- Or, to publicly fund stuff of public interest, rather than start-up ideas.
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- life hack: I was annoyed that I didn't have enough dishes to run a full load, so I repacked the dishwasher less efficiently
- This tool is extremely helpful and I think all scientists could benefit from it. Good at all stages of the research process, especially the very beginning. It's also a great of example of how we *should* be building AI tools for science. Not to replace scientific thinking, but to hone it.
- First week where planyourscience.com had more than 1000 organic users. I know this is nothing by software standards but it is quite something by academic standards. And to everyone using it - tell me what could/should be better. And use it to export a first draft ;)
- Especially relevant as a counterexample to OpenAI’s Prism tool, which will only worsen the science slop problem. The point isn’t to be anti-AI. It’s to demand a better philosophy behind the tools we build
- The billionaire techbros have such poor imagination generally.
- Thank you Nicole! Nicole's wonderful book 'Elusive Cures' has played an important role in pushing me out of my comfort zone and join forces w/ @philippedomenech.bsky.social and @bellecguill.bsky.social, here. Exciting times ahead for neuroscience. Go read it, if you haven't yet!
- Oh wow - huge thanks (and so great to hear this story!!)
- Brain modularity is a concept inspired by how we make machines. But brains are not made by people. press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
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View full threadRe Fodor: my ignorant impression is that he turned out wrong in so many ways (extreme nativism, anti connectionism and even rejecting evolution, I'm told?) that it's not even worth debating it. Every time I tried reading his stuff I find it so detached from 🧠 and get confused. Should I try again? 😅
- Answering with a German "Jein": you should try again; you will likely remain confused or frustrated. You might look to contemporary scholars reappraising some of his ideas (e.g., @quiltydunn.bsky.social)
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- 🤷♂️I don't know enough about organs and precise definitions of modularity. I do agree with the OP that it's not clear at this point if brains are as modular as human bodies and other natural systems.
- The latter point is fair. I worry that without a precise (or at least suitably articulated) definition of 'modularity' post Fodor, this distinction becomes undesirably messy (which is not a point against you). Maybe this book will offer one.
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- Postdoc position in Paris: come help develop new generation human brain computer interfaces ⚡🧠💻 Interested? Contact me if you have experience with machine learning (e.g. simulation-based inference, RL, generative/diffusion models) or dynamical systems. See below for + details and retweet 🙏
- We'd be happy to share this on our jobs page! Is the job ad posted anywhere we could link to?
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- Amazing postdoc opportunity!
- I highly recommend this postdoc position in Paris. Joao is amazing and it's a unique opportunity to do serious computational/ML analysis with human brain recordings in vivo. 🧪 🧠
- Seems like a dream postdoc opportunity! Such a cool project, team and city
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- Alternative versions are available.
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- Read this beautiful commentary from Stacey Patton. substack.com/@drstaceypat...
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- mid career academics, are we closer to Jon Hamm age 35 in the Mad Men pilot or Kieran Culkin age 42 in A Real Pain, or does it vary by day of the week
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- Had the honor & pleasure to spend another week at @imbizo.bsky.social, meeting brilliant young talents from across the world. This week came to rescue me from the horror unfolding in my home country, Iran & reminded me the world is still vast & beautiful, despite the few who work so hard to ruin it.
- We concluded Cycle 2 with a bang on Saturday! 💥 Dr. @athenaakrami.bsky.social delivered an incredible lecture on Hopfield networks and attractor dynamics. From memory storage and neural attractors to prior experience, it was the perfect end to the week.🧠📉 @simonsfoundation.org @ibroorg.bsky.social
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[Not loaded yet]- More than you would expect from studying AI and less than you would expect from studying neurobiology.
- "How much of the brain's learned algorithms depend on the fact it is a brain?" arxiv.org/abs/2601.02063 The brain is a neural network, but also a biological organ (unlike artificial neural networks). How much does this matter to cognition?
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- 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗼 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻? "High-resolution activity maps of PFC did NOT align with cytoarchitecturally defined subregions." Key tenet in neuroscience is that cytoarchitectonic boundaries correspond to functional ones. NB: study in the mouse #neuroskyence doi.org/10.1038/s415...
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- Dogs and cats have granular PFC?
- I know this isn't the content you followed me for, but I watched a father desperately searching through piles of bodies, crying out, "Sepehr, Baba, where are you?" A 12-fu…-minute video searching through the bodies. It is a level of pain I can’t put into words. …
- I like journal clubs where you are only allowed to say positive things about a paper. They are so much more satisfying.
- We go around the room with 5 questions. 1) What did you like about the paper? 2) What did you learn? 3) What would you like to understand better? 4) What would you like to see to improve the paper? 5) What ideas did this spark for your research?
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