Mark D Humphries
Theoretical systems neuroscientist. Author of “The Spike: An Epic Journey Through the Brain in 2.1 Seconds”: tinyurl.com/ymwy9jrh
Lab: https://humphries-lab.org
Essays on the brain: drmdhumphries.medium.com
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesI missed some exciting stuff last year!
- Just published my review of neuroscience in 2025, on The Spike. The 10th of these, would you believe? This year we have foundation models, breakthroughs in using light to understand the brain, a gene therapy, and more Enjoy! medium.com/the-spike/20...
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesI can't believe it took me this long to find @markdhumphries.bsky.social on Bluesky, but his annual review makes up for the lost time. On excellent form as always.
- Just published my review of neuroscience in 2025, on The Spike. The 10th of these, would you believe? This year we have foundation models, breakthroughs in using light to understand the brain, a gene therapy, and more Enjoy! medium.com/the-spike/20...
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesGreat read as always. There is clearly accelerating tension between ever more complex computational approaches applied to brain data and actually figuring stuff out about the brain.
- Just published my review of neuroscience in 2025, on The Spike. The 10th of these, would you believe? This year we have foundation models, breakthroughs in using light to understand the brain, a gene therapy, and more Enjoy! medium.com/the-spike/20...
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesAlways full of insightful laughs! Thank you for keeping it up for 10 years, @markdhumphries.bsky.social. " ... It can though predict with fair accuracy the activity of held-out neurons during videos of natural scenes. Scenes like driving through a desert. As mice do ... "
- Just published my review of neuroscience in 2025, on The Spike. The 10th of these, would you believe? This year we have foundation models, breakthroughs in using light to understand the brain, a gene therapy, and more Enjoy! medium.com/the-spike/20...
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesGreat summary, thanks for writing this! One nit, we started the 'core' merely as a shared feature space for (translation invariant) visual neurons*. Simple idea, not to be conflated with all the 'foundation model' and 'digital twin' marketing later 😜 * proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/2017/f...
- Just published my review of neuroscience in 2025, on The Spike. The 10th of these, would you believe? This year we have foundation models, breakthroughs in using light to understand the brain, a gene therapy, and more Enjoy! medium.com/the-spike/20...
- 🚨Funded PhD studentship project🚨 "Leveraging population activity trajectories to optimise Brain-computer interfaces for arm movement" with myself & @katjakornysheva.bsky.social By: Jan 9th 2026 Info on project, funding & how to apply: more.bham.ac.uk/mrc-aim/phd-... (submit to Nottingham)
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesRead yet another review today that ascribes GECIs' larger SNR vs GEVIs to their being evolved earlier (suggesting the GECIs are better optimized). This assumption is understandable but incorrect. GEVIs' photonic response per molecule per AP have been as good as GECIs since ASAP3.
- Terrific work led by @emmaroscow.bsky.social showing that hippocampal replay reflects events with large prediction errors, all the better to bootstrap learning as we slumber Congratulations to Matt Jones & Nathan Lepora for seeing this through to the end! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesExcited to share our preprint on variability in patch leaving decisions! Check out the 🧵 below
- 🧪Preprint! How foragers depart from optimal models can tell us a lot about how they compute their decisions. A strong but underexplored departure is that foragers widely vary when they leave identical patches. A 🧵 doi.org/10.1101/2025... With @emmavscholey.bsky.social @brainapps.bsky.social
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesSuper pleased with this one, led by the amazing PhD student and foraging expert @emmavscholey.bsky.social!
- 🧪Preprint! How foragers depart from optimal models can tell us a lot about how they compute their decisions. A strong but underexplored departure is that foragers widely vary when they leave identical patches. A 🧵 doi.org/10.1101/2025... With @emmavscholey.bsky.social @brainapps.bsky.social
- 🧪Preprint! How foragers depart from optimal models can tell us a lot about how they compute their decisions. A strong but underexplored departure is that foragers widely vary when they leave identical patches. A 🧵 doi.org/10.1101/2025... With @emmavscholey.bsky.social @brainapps.bsky.social
- We ask if foragers’ variability can be explained by them making deliberately stochastic leaving choices: basically, whether they flip a biased coin We show deliberately stochastic choice makes weird predictions for how foragers’ respond to their environment, and test them across tasks and species
- Perhaps the weirdest prediction is that, under a wide range of conditions, foragers’ stochasticity is independent of when they leave. In other words, their variability is decoupled from their reward information And that’s exactly what we see in the data (solid lines; model predictions: dashed)
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View full threadA nice example of how sequential and simultaneous choice can fundamentally differ: in the latter, the longer a subject waits to decide, the more variable their decision time. We show foraging decisions can have independence of decision time and variability, or even an inverted relationship! End 🧵
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesDelighted to share our latest preprint. It's been a long time coming. Thanks to all the authors for their unique contribution and for for their patience. We show how the visual thalamus deals with active and passive head motion in freely moving animals: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesOkay, here are some first reflections on Watson. Watson's life is a tragedy, really of Shakespearean proportions. He did not, as most bios will tell you, do one great thing when he was young and then collect laurels for it for the next 60 years. His career arc was unlike any in science.
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesNearly ready to go! Mechanistic Basis of Foraging 2025!
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesExcited to share our new #biorxivpreprint: “Sexual dimorphism in the complete connectome of the Drosophila male central nervous system” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We describe the #connectomics reconstruction and analysis of an entire adult #maleCNS #drosophila central nervous system. 1/10
- 🚨Registration for Mechanistic Basis of Foraging 2025 closes October 20th 🚨 Speakers @mkflugge.bsky.social @aaronbornstein.bsky.social @benhayden.bsky.social @ellileadbeater.bsky.social @davidrobbe.bsky.social @dlbarack.bsky.social @becketebs.bsky.social uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesWe are looking for a postdoctoral fellow to join the lab to study how cortical microcircuits are organised at the single cell level using high throughput molecular methods. Please share and get in touch if interested! www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesPleased to have this review out in @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social. In it we discuss various aspects of the intersection between foraging behaviors and neuroscience, and offer some future directions: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesPlus, there's now a related conference organized by some wonderful people @unibirmingham.bsky.social in the UK, including @brainapps.bsky.social, @markdhumphries.bsky.social, and others. (Registration for this conference is still open until the 20th October!) uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...
- #neuroskyence, a question for you: Can you think of a paper that shows the latent dynamics of a network are robust to the loss of its neurons? (Or, if you prefer, that the manifold is robust to the same)
- Reposted by Mark D Humphries“Mapping ion channel function” doi.org/10.7554/eLif... isn’t exactly a citation slayer, but it’s still one of my favourites (& my first independent project). Today we push pt 2, where we trace code origin & unite almost all channel models in a common expression. Boom! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- #Neuroskyence hive mind: what’s the best single paper that explains the attractor theory of working memory? For reference, my go to has been Wang’s 2001 TINS paper, but that’s nearly a quarter century old! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Early-bird registration for "The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging 2025" ends September 30th A meeting for everyone fascinated by the brain's role in foraging, 3-5 November 2025 at University of Birmingham. Full speaker list, schedule and more now on the website uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...
- The MRC are looking for a computational neuroscientist (anything from cognition to NeuroAI) to join their Neuroscience & Mental Health Board, to replace me as I step down next year. Drop me a line if you want to know more Deadline September 14th www.ukri.org/who-we-are/w....
- The MRC are looking for a computational neuroscientist to join their Neuroscience & Mental Health Board, to replace me as I step down next year. Drop me a line if you want to know more Deadline September 14th www.ukri.org/who-we-are/w....
- Reposted by Mark D Humphries
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesJob Alert!!! We are looking for a motivated postdoc to join a 3-year BBSRC funded project led by my colleague Carl Stevenson (I’m coPI). This multi-disciplinary project will combine in vivo heart rate monitoring and optogenetics with behavioural testing (fear and active avoidance) in rats.
- Closing soon! Abstract submission for The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging 2025 A multidisciplinary meeting on the neural, behavioural and computational foundations of foraging across species: uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis... Deadline: August 29
- Confirmed talks: @mkflugge.bsky.social, Susan Healy, Benjamin Hayden, @fearbrain.bsky.social, @becketebs.bsky.social, @dlbarack.bsky.social, Jennifer Li, @ellileadbeater.bsky.social, @aaronbornstein.bsky.social, Nicholas Furl, @markdhumphries.bsky.social & more
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesGreat article by @markdhumphries.bsky.social here. Humphries’ work had a significant impact on my thinking. This is precisely what we attempt to do in our recent preprint, and in previous published neural modelling work. I’m sympathetic to the focus on dynamics in coarse graining.
- Our current approach to defining neural populations is largely arbitrary. We need new methods for grouping cells, ideally by their dynamics, writes @markdhumphries.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesGreat essay Mark! I think your definition of grouping by dynamics is very related to Fodor's "information encapsulation" property of modular systems. We explored this a bit in two recent papers which, if you haven't already seen, you might like (in next 2 posts).
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesSo stoked to see this in press! Diverging network architecture of the C. elegans connectome and signaling network journal: journals.aps.org/prxlife/acce... preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2412.14498 1/3
- My latest column for @thetransmitter.bsky.social - why neural populations are a convenient fiction doi.org/10.53053/FZK...
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesOur current approach to defining neural populations is largely arbitrary. We need new methods for grouping cells, ideally by their dynamics, writes @markdhumphries.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesAbstract submission open for The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging 2025 (University of Birmingham, 3–5 November) A multidisciplinary event exploring the neural, behavioural and computational foundations of foraging across species: uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis... Deadline: August 17, 2025
- Reposted by Mark D Humphries2 Lecturer (Assistant Prof) positions available @yorkpsychology.bsky.social! Come join our department! #neuroskyence #cognition #psychscisky #neurojobs jobs.york.ac.uk/vacancy/lect...
- Abstract submission open for The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging 2025 (U. Birmingham, 3-5 November) uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis... Deadline: August 17 A meeting for all fascinated by the brain's role in foraging Pls share!
- Confirmed talks: @mkflugge.bsky.social, Susan Healy, Benjamin Hayden, @fearbrain.bsky.social, Becket Ebitz, David Barack, Jennifer Li, Elli Leadbeater, @aaronbornstein.bsky.social, Nicholas Furl, me, & more Thanks: @unibirmingham.bsky.social, BBSRC & Centre for Human Brain Health for support
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesPlease repost! We're hiring a postdoc to work with me and @salagapan.bsky.social on an exciting interdisciplinary project in human neuroscience and brain-body interactions underlying effortful behavior in health and mood disorders. siplab.gatech.edu/postdoc_ad_2...
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesWe had an incredible gathering at UK Neural Computation 2025 @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social last week 🇬🇧 Macron missed out... Some of the UK’s very best at the frontier of comp neuro. Thanks to our sponsors ARIA + Crick & UKNC team: @markdhumphries.bsky.social + @neuralreckoning.bsky.social!
- Fabulous day at UK Neural Computation 2025! Thanks to today’s invited speakers Jonathan Cornford, Jenny Bizley, Petr Znamenskiy and Flavia Mancini Congratulations to ECR speakers Ian Hawes and Andrea Colins Rodriguez, selected from 80+ outstanding abstract submissions Roll on Day 3! #UKNC25
- Fabulous first day of ECR workshops at UK Neural Computation 2025! Great to see and meet so many of the next generation of terrific scientists Thanks to @danakarca.bsky.social for leading on this and @neuralreckoning.bsky.social for the pics #UKNC25
- Among other things, they got me warbling at them about how to write grants and how they’re assessed…
- On my way to kick off the ECR day of UK Neural Computation 2025 at Imperial College with @danakarca.bsky.social and @neuralreckoning.bsky.social Looking forward to a fascinating few days of science and catching up with friends old and new! #UKNC25 neuralcomputation.uk/program.html
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesI am delighted to announce registration and abstract submission is open for "The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging 2025" to be held at the Edgbaston Park Hotel, University of Birmingham, UK on 3-5th November 2025. uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesAlmost last call to register for UK neural computation conference in London July 10-11. Registration deadline is July 1st. We have some great talks and posters as well as a session on funding with ARIA. 🤖🧠🧪 Look forward to seeing you all there. Now click here 👇 neuralcomputation.uk
- Closing soon! Register by July 1st for UK Neural Computation 2025 neuralcomputation.uk ECR day: 9 July - careers, grants, starting a lab Main meeting: 10-11 July - 13 speakers, 70+ posters, sandpit Hosted by @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social Sponsors @aria-research.bsky.social @crick.ac.uk
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesExcited for the UK Neural Computation Conference 2025 @ Imperial, 9th - 11th July! 🚀 World leading scientists working in brain computation - from experimental to modelling, mathematics & ML (+ all combinations thereof). Registration closes 1st July! Plz share: neuralcomputation.uk
- Now with fixed link! neuralcomputation.uk/registration...
- Registration for UK Neural Computation 2025 closing soon - 1st July neuralcomputation.uk/registration... ECR day: 9 July, ~30 free places Main meeting: 10-11 July Pls share! Sponsors @aria-research.bsky.social @crick.ac.uk Organisers: @danakarca.bsky.social @neuralreckoning.bsky.social & me
- Registration for UK Neural Computation 2025 closing soon - 1st July neuralcomputation.uk/registration... ECR day: 9 July, ~30 free places Main meeting: 10-11 July Pls share! Sponsors @aria-research.bsky.social @crick.ac.uk Organisers: @danakarca.bsky.social @neuralreckoning.bsky.social & me
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesIt's publication day for 📘Elusive Cures. What a moment! 1st book, 1st time on Mindscape (which, as many of you know, is one of my favorite podcasts). Here, @seanmcarroll.bsky.social and I have a wide-ranging conversation around: Why are brain and mental disorders so hard to understand and treat?
- Mindscape 317 | Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social on Why Neuroscience Hasn't Solved Brain Disorders. Or, why Bench to Bedside is harder than it sounds. #MindscapePocast www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025...
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesThe Transmitter is honored to have won four Gold and two Silver National ASBPE's Azbee Awards of Excellence! bit.ly/3Fd2t87 Congratulations to all the winners, and thank you to the neuroscience community for your continued support!
- Terrific example of psychology done rigorously! Well done all; and great to see the outcome of all those people toing and froing outside my office under Dani Ropar’s watchful eye…
- New paper alert! Information transfer within and between autistic and non-autistic people is out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com nature.com/articles/s41... THREAD! 🧵⬇️
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesExcited to share my PhD paper! In it, we use targeted 2-photon optogenetic stimulation to determine how V1 activity is read-out in a detection task. We found that network influence, not visual coding properties, predicted the impact of ensembles on behavior - contradicting our expectations (1/5).
- Reposted by Mark D Humphries🧠What do random neural networks have in common with the motor cortex? Turns out, a lot! Both exhibit similar low‑dimensional dynamics across sensorimotor tasks.👇🧵
- Reposted by Mark D Humphries"Researchers recruited to work in the UK have to fund a £1,035 annual immigration health surcharge, which must be paid in full in advance, as well as up to £1,519 in visa fees. For a family of four, the upfront costs can total almost £30,000."
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesBecause we must build good things while we scream about the bad, I have started a "Data for Good" team @data-for-good-team.bsky.social that partners with organizations needing short-term data science help. We have three projects ongoing & will add more as our capacity grows. data-for-good-team.org
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesJust look what was waiting for me when I came back from my run. Elusive Cures is now a REAL BOOK!! press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesRegistration is open for UK Neural Computation 2025 10th/11th July! We are offering 8 conference fellowships to support attendance. ***Abstract submission deadline is 12th May!*** neuralcomputation.uk/submission.h... Register here: neuralcomputation.uk/registration... Any q's - get in touch!
- Conference Fellowships for the UK Neural Computation meeting are now available, to support presenting authors; sponsored by @aria-research.bsky.social Includes fee waiver and attendance expenses Apply here by May 23rd neuralcomputation.uk/fellowships.... p.s. UKNC abstracts due by May 12th!
- Reposted by Mark D Humphries📢 We have an opportunity for students to join our PhD programme in Theoretical Neuroscience and Machine Learning this September. Application deadline is 27 May 2025. Information & how to apply: www.ucl.ac.uk/gatsby/study-and-work/gatsby-unit-phd-programme
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesWe are super happy to announce the third Workshop of Ideas in Neuroscience! We will once again look critically at assumptions of modern neuroscience: what does it mean that the brain encodes information? Is this a useful approach, or a metaphor that blurs our vision?
- Basal ganglia output is a formidable bottleneck Striatum neurons project to output nuclei in a ratio ~16:1; but their targets outnumber them by up to 150 to 1. New paper from me, on how I got to those numbers & the model of basal ganglia output they imply www.eneuro.org/content/12/4...
- Conference Fellowships for the UK Neural Computation meeting are now available, to support presenting authors; sponsored by @aria-research.bsky.social Includes fee waiver and attendance expenses Apply here by May 23rd neuralcomputation.uk/fellowships.... p.s. UKNC abstracts due by May 12th!
- Useful idea here to talk of “converging evidence” rather than “scientific consensus” Not least because some read “consensus” as a conspiracy to silence alternative voices We’ve other names for similar ideas - Edward Wilson’s “consilience”, “triangulation” - but none so transparent
- "One concept that creates misunderstanding is 'scientific consensus.' It’s time to stop using this shorthand and make clear what it really means," argues @holdenthorp.bsky.social in a new #ScienceEditorial. scim.ag/4jH2WxK
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesRegistration open for UK Neural Computation 2025 @Imperial neuralcomputation.uk/registration... ECR day: 9 July, ~30 free places Main meeting: 10-11 July Pls share! Sponsors @aria-research.bsky.social @crick.ac.uk Organisers: @danakarca.bsky.social @neuralreckoning.bsky.social & me
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesDoes your research involve comparing experimental conditions? Then our latest publication is for you: We developed generalized contrastive PCA (gcPCA), a tool for comparing high-dimensional datasets. 🧠📊 doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012747 This tool was born out of necessity, here is the story. 🧵 1/
- Reposted by Mark D HumphriesThe preliminary program for the 2026 Basal Ganglia Gordon Research Conference is up! www.grc.org/basal-gangli... Super excited about this program and to move the meeting to Europe for the first time - come join us in Tuscany!
