Matthijs Pals
Using deep learning to study neural dynamics
@mackelab.bsky.social
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsPostdoc 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 🙏
- Reposted by Matthijs Pals1/7 How should feedback signals influence a network during learning? Should they first adjust synaptic weights, which then indirectly change neural activity (as in backprop.)? Or should they first adjust neural activity to guide synaptic updates (e.g., target prop.)? openreview.net/forum?id=xVI...
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsOur paper on data constrained RNN that generalize to optogenetic perturbations now citable on eLife: doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsFinally got the job ad—looking for 2 PhD students to start spring next year: www.gao-unit.com/join-us/ If comp neuro, ML, and AI4Neuro is your thing, or you just nerd out over brain recordings, apply! I'm at neurips. DM me here / on the conference app or email if you want to meet 🏖️🌮
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsWe are looking for a Research Engineer (E13 TV-L) to work at the intersection of #ML and #compneuro! 🤖🧠 Help us build large-scale bio-inspired neural networks, write high-quality research code, and contribute to open-source tools like jaxley, sbi, and flyvis 🪰. More info: www.mackelab.org/jobs/
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsMackeLab has grown! 🎉 Warm welcome to 5(!) brilliant and fun new PhD students / research scientists who joined our lab in the past year — we can’t wait to do great science and already have good times together! 🤖🧠 Meet them in the thread 👇 1/7
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsI am super happy to share that our project on training biophysical models with Jaxley is now published in Nature Methods: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsOur work on training biophysical models with Jaxley is now out in @natmethods.nature.com. Led by @deismic.bsky.social, with @philipp.hertie.ai, @ppjgoncalves.bsky.social & @jakhmack.bsky.social et al. Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsThe Macke lab is well-represented at the @bernsteinneuro.bsky.social conference in Frankfurt this year! We have lots of exciting new work to present with 7 posters (details👇) 1/9
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsI'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 🤗
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsOur #AI #DynamicalSystems #FoundationModel DynaMix was accepted to #NeurIPS2025 with outstanding reviews (6555) – first model which can *zero-shot*, w/o any fine-tuning, forecast the *long-term statistics* of time series provided a context. Test it on #HuggingFace: huggingface.co/spaces/Durst...
- Can time series (TS) #FoundationModels (FM) like Chronos zero-shot generalize to unseen #DynamicalSystems (DS)? No, they cannot! But *DynaMix* can, the first TS/DS FM based on principles of DS reconstruction, capturing the long-term evolution of out-of-domain DS: arxiv.org/pdf/2505.131... (1/6)
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsFrom hackathon to release: sbi v0.25 is here! 🎉 What happens when dozens of SBI researchers and practitioners collaborate for a week? New inference methods, new documentation, lots of new embedding networks, a bridge to pyro and a bridge between flow matching and score-based methods 🤯 1/7 🧵
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsGot prov. approval for 2 major grants in Neuro-AI & Dynamical Systems Reconstruction, on learning & inference in non-stationary environments, out-of-domain generalization, and DS foundation models. To all AI/math/DS enthusiasts: Expect job announcements (PhD/PostDoc) soon! Feel free to get in touch.
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsJelmer Borst and I are looking for a PhD candidate to build an EEG-based model of human working memory! This is a really cool project that I've wanted to kick off for a while, and I can't wait to see it happen. Please share and I'm happy to answer any Qs about the project! www.rug.nl/about-ug/wor...
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- Reposted by Matthijs PalsHow do animals learn new rules? By systematically testing diff. behavioral strategies, guided by selective attn. to rule-relevant cues: rdcu.be/etlRV Akin to in-context learning in AI, strategy selection depends on the animals' "training set" (prior experience), with similar repr. in rats & humans.
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsOut today in @nature.com: we show that individual neurons have diverse tuning to a decision variable computed by the entire population, revealing a unifying geometric principle for the encoding of sensory and dynamic cognitive variables. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsOur new preprint 👀
- The firing of neural populations is high-dim even if their subthreshold activity is low-dim! This work by @bio-emergent.bsky.social and @haydari.bsky.social shows how, with a solvable model, a data analysis technique, and data from mouse visual cortex: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsWe just pushed “Memory by a 1000 rules” onto bioRxiv, where we use clever #ML to find #plasticity quadruplets (EE, EI, IE, II) that learn basic stability in spiking nets. Why is it cool? We find 1000s!! of solutions, and they don’t just stabilise. They #memorise! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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- Reposted by Matthijs PalsRe-posting is appreciated: We have a fully funded PhD position in CMC lab @cmc-lab.bsky.social (at @tudresden_de). You can use forms.gle/qiAv5NZ871kv... to send your application and find more information. Deadline is April 30. Find more about CMC lab: cmclab.org and email me if you have questions.
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- Happening tomorrow morning :).
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- Our study on sequence working memory using human spiking data and RNNs, is finally published :). Check it out! 👇
- Science Alert 🚨: Our paper is now out in @natureneuro.bsky.social - We show that the firing phase of neurons in human MTL doesn’t reflect the order of events, challenging a long-standing theory of human memory. nature.com/articles/s41593-025-01893-7
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsIn the physical world, almost all information is transmitted through traveling waves -- why should it be any different in your neural network? Super excited to share recent work with the brilliant @mozesjacobs.bsky.social: "Traveling Waves Integrate Spatial Information Through Time" 1/14
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- Reposted by Matthijs Pals1) Some exciting science in turbulent times: How do mice distinguish self-generated vs. object-generated looming stimuli? Our new study combines VR and neural recordings from superior colliculus (SC) 🧠🐭 to explore this question. Check out our preprint doi.org/10.1101/2024... 🧵
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- Reposted by Matthijs PalsPre-print 🧠🧪 Is mechanism modeling dead in the AI era? ML models trained to predict neural activity fail to generalize to unseen opto perturbations. But mechanism modeling can solve that. We say "perturbation testing" is the right way to evaluate mechanisms in data-constrained models 1/8
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- How to find all fixed points in piece-wise linear recurrent neural networks (RNNs)? A short thread 🧵 In RNNs with N units with ReLU(x-b) activations the phase space is partioned in 2^N regions by hyperplanes at x=b 1/7
- We can go through all those regions, one by one, and solve the corresponding linear system equations (see e.g., work from Curto and Durstwitz' labs) 2/7
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsThe sbi package is growing into a community project 🌍 To reflect this and the many algorithms, neural nets, and diagnostics that have been added since its initial release, we have written a new software paper 📝 Check it out, and reach out if you want to get involved: arxiv.org/abs/2411.17337
- Reposted by Matthijs PalsThis list likely reflects mainly my interests and circle, and I’m sure I’ve missed many people, but I gave it a try: (I’ll be slowly editing it until it reaches 150/150) go.bsky.app/7VFUkdn (also, I tried but couldn't remove my profile...)
