Andrew MacAskill
UCL neuroscientist investigating the neural basis of contextual decision making. Views are my own.
Prof @uclnpp
lab website: www.macaskilllab.com
UCL profile: profiles.ucl.ac.uk/5194
also @macaskillaf@fediscience.org
- Updated work from @jessegeerts.bsky.social extending his results on transitive inference in transformers (including LLMs!) updated paper: arxiv.org/abs/2506.04289 bleeprint (what are we calling these?) below ⬇️
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- Ian Chapman: no move away from applicant-led funding at UKRI. BBSRC funding pause is a temporary - 'a matter of a few weeks' before they move to an always-open system (as at e.g. EPSRC, AHRC). MRC pause will extend to early summer, and then will open again.
- Why don’t neural networks learn all at once, but instead progress from simple to complex solutions? And what does “simple” even mean across different neural network architectures? Sharing our new paper @iclr_conf led by Yedi Zhang with Peter Latham arxiv.org/abs/2512.20607
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- Leaks everywhere and finally we get an official statement, one that somehow manages to say a lot while; No timelines. No clarity. No acknowledgement of impact on ECRs whose careers depend UKRI funding. “Later this year” isn’t a plan. And the sector deserves better than reassurance without detail.
- Today, we're sharing an open letter from our Chief Executive, Professor Sir Ian Chapman, outlining changes to UKRI investment approach, and addressing concerns about research funding and the financial position of STFC. Read his letter here: www.ukri.org/news/open-le...
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- Both MRC and BBSRC responsive modes now withdrawn until further notice. Existing applications unlikely to succeed (late 2025 round expecting 1-5% success rate). Listen, I get that UKRI wants to pivot. But killing both at once is devastating. Let's hope at least one opens by summer... #AcademicSky
- @ukri.org if there ia any chance to at least keep BBSRC responsive mode open, and normal, during the downtime of MRC... Otherwise this pivot will absolutely not boost the academic sector's collab with industry. It will kill it. We'll all lose our planned staff and lab continuity will be broken.
- Like... @ukri.org if continuity of local induction and training is lost, we'll all be set back 1-2 years of productivity. Just devastating.
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- This is totally wild. Remember the object they are attending to is presented egocentrically, but the allocentric theta sweeps follow it. The whole system is wired up to provide something like an "integrated attention reflex".
- The hippocampal map has its own attentional control signal! Our new study reveals that theta #sweeps can be instantly biased towards behaviourally relevant locations. See 📹 in post 4/6 and preprint here 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵(1/6)
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- Really thrilled that this paper led by @neurozz.bsky.social is now published in its final version in @elife.bsky.social!! This is a memory-focused (as opposed to RL-focused) account of the detailed characteristics of forward and backward awake and sleep replay! elifesciences.org/articles/99931
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- 📣 PhD position in computational & systems neuroscience (Marseille, France). ⏰ Deadline 28 Jan. We are recruiting a PhD student to work on neuromodulatory control of predictive processing in mouse vision, jointly supervised by @ederancz.bsky.social (INMED) and @laurentperrinet.bsky.social (INT).
- 🧠 New year, new preprint! Why does motor learning involve multiple brain regions? We propose that the cortico-cerebellar system learns a "map" of actions where similar movements are nearby, while basal ganglia do RL in this simplified space. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- Can’t wait for Cosyne to continue the tradition of returning reviews on Christmas Eve. Nothing jollier than the anger of a Cosyne reviewer with your mince pie.
- New preprint from the lab! A frontal motor circuit for economic decisions and actions: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We use a novel task in mice, cortex-wide imaging and optogenetics, NPX recording and modelling to reveal a circuit mechanism that transforms abstract decisions to spatial actions.
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- New preprint alert! Cognitive maps are flexible, dynamic, (re)constructed representations #psychscisky #neuroskyence #cognition #philsky 🧪
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- That’s a wrap on #SfN2025 for our lab. Feeling grateful to do neuroscience with such an outstanding group — and to catch up with friends and colleagues across the community. SfN always reminds me how lucky we are to be part of this field.
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- *tapping the sign*
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- 1. New preprint resolving a conundrum in systems neuroscience with an AI scientist, and humans Reilly Tilbury, Dabin Kwon, @haydari.bsky.social, @jacobmratliff.bsky.social, @bio-emergent.bsky.social, @carandinilab.net, @kevinjmiller.bsky.social, @neurokim.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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- Congrats to Ella for her new paper! She asked a really interesting question about how the brain represents uncertainty during hidden state inference, and in a lovely crossover with theoretical work, she shows that in mice, acetylcholine dynamics play a crucial role. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Great to see this out, congratulations Ella and team!
