Elliot Smith
Human neuronal computations during cognition, seizures, brain stimulation, etc… @ Utah. Www.neurosmiths.org
- Reposted by Elliot SmithWe’re hiring! The Suthana Lab @ Duke is looking for a Research Assistant to join our team studying human memory & real-world 🧠 dynamics using wearable tech & intracranial recordings. Apply: careers.duke.edu/job/Durham-C... You can also email suthanalab@duke.edu with CV/questions. Please share!
- The fact that nobody wants to come to the US now does technically make the border more secure…
- Reposted by Elliot SmithA 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...
- Reposted by Elliot SmithFinal 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.
- Reposted by Elliot Smithsenior folks: please do this for your trainees!
- Reposted by Elliot SmithPreprint alert!!! We recorded directly from the human ventral tegmental area (VTA), the principal source of cortical dopaminergic innervation, while patients performed an instrumental learning task. 🧵👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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[This post could not be retrieved] - Reposted by Elliot SmithHow do people compute a sense of confidence? This question is usually addressed using very simple images because we don't know how complex stimuli are represented internally. In a new paper, we addressed this question using artificial neural networks (ANNs). journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
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- Reposted by Elliot Smith𝗛𝗼𝘄 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...
- Reposted by Elliot SmithRipple oscillations are central for memory and sleep. But ripple detection in humans remains challenging. Here we introduce a simulation approach in @natcomms.nature.com as common ripple detectors mainly pick up 1/f noise and not genuine oscillations 👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroskyence
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- Frontotemporal beta & gamma bursting in the human brain correlated with working memory functions. Congrats to Walt et al. & @bkundu.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Elliot SmithHow do we achieve few-shot generalization? New work led by @fabianrenz.bsky.social dives into the role of replay in learning and using structure to generalize reward. Dream team effort with Shany Grossman @nathanieldaw.bsky.social Peter Dayan & @doellerlab.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- Has anyone actually been able to link their ORCID??? I’ve Ben trying everything over the past week and am pretty demoralized.
- Reposted by Elliot SmithVery important!
- Full survey results show American public have high levels of confidence in scientists while revealing some partisan differences (including on how to fund science), but statements asserting lost trust should be read instead as intentional efforts to degrade trust. www.pewresearch.org/science/2026...
- Reposted by Elliot Smithmain goal for this year: find a new job! 🙂 looking for a role with fun & complex technical challenges & within a great community. my main expertise is in signal processing/EEG/MEG, but topic-wise I am quite flexible. science/industry both great! starting mid-year. nschawor.github.io/cv
- Reposted by Elliot SmithMore than 200 published studies and at least seven ongoing clinical trials rely on potentially faulty brain network maps, according to a study published yesterday. By @avaskham.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/brain-imagin...
- Reposted by Elliot SmithI’m very happy to share the latest from my lab published in @Nature Hippocampal neurons that initially encode reward shift their tuning over the course of days to precede or predict reward. Full text here: rdcu.be/eY5nh
- Reposted by Elliot SmithWhen and why do modular representations emerge in neural networks? @stefanofusi.bsky.social and I posted a preprint answering this question last year, and now it has been extensively revised, refocused, and generalized. Read more here: doi.org/10.1101/2024... (1/7)
- Reposted by Elliot SmithPostdoctoral research position in #ComputationalPsychiatry and #EEG as part of relmed.ac.uk trial testing reinforcement learning as biomarker for antidepressant treatment response. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/... @uclbrainscience.bsky.social @mikebrowning.bsky.social @relmed.bsky.social
- Reposted by Elliot SmithYeah! Let's get this year started off right. A new theoretical model for everyone's favorite sensitive and specific neural marker. So why is it a marker of goals if it is called the Reward Positivity? 1/4
- Reposted by Elliot SmithMore news (not good) from NIH The renewal request from National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke Director Walter Koroshetz has been denied. I guess the NIH_leadership™ needed another position to fill with their time-tested recruitment process.
- Aperiodic exponent from intracranial recordings very accurately predicts depressive symptoms in epilepsy patients. Great work from Mark Libowitz in Ben Shofty’s lab. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- Feliz navidad from Oaxaca
- Reposted by Elliot SmithWe took a stab at how to infer both the dynamics and control parameters of partially-observable systems. It’s a nasty problem, but @vgeadah.bsky.social made tremendous progress, ending up with some really elegant formalisms.
- In a system subject to unobserved control, can you infer both the underlying dynamics and the control objective? 🤔 A year ago, I was presenting our work at IEEE CDC on solving this problem for stochastic LQR. arxiv.org/abs/2502.15014 Short 🧵 on the results, and how I think about them a year later.
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- That’s a wrap on #SfN25 with two terrific talks and two pretty packed posters from the immediate lab.
- Reposted by Elliot SmithThanks, Adrian! I’m excited to be starting a lab at the University of Utah (theluolab.org)! We’re recruiting at all levels. If you’re excited about neural computation, large-scale multi-region recordings, and machine learning, let’s talk! And yes, the mountains are as incredible as they say!
- My colleague, office mate and friend Thomas Luo (@thomas-zhihao-luo.bsky.social) has just left to start his own lab (theluolab.org). If you are looking to join a lab in neuro. and/or machine learning, you could not hope for a better mentor. Congrats to @utah.edu for the great hire! Please share!
- Reposted by Elliot Smith🚨New publication! I am extremely happy to share this new review article in elife on #Traveling_Waves! @erc.europa.eu @upcite.bsky.social elifesciences.org/articles/106...
- Reposted by Elliot SmithThe human brain responds to the sounds of both familiar and unfamiliar languages in a similar way, according to research in Nature. The findings might guide future approaches to language learning and rehabilitation. go.nature.com/4ppvsHb #Neuroskyence 🧪
- your brain on tik tok
- Dance styles engage the brain in different ways depending on the movements, aesthetics, and emotions associated with the dance, according to a study in Nature Communications. go.nature.com/4i8eLO2 #Neuroskyence 🧪
- Reposted by Elliot SmithMy paper is out! Computational modeling of error patterns during reward-based learning show evidence that habit learning (value free!) supplements working memory in 7 human data sets. rdcu.be/eQjLN
- More correlational support for the inward connectivity and propagation that Cathy Schevon first discovered over a decade ago. Collapse of interictal suppressive networks permits seizure spread url: academic.oup.com/brain/articl...
- Reposted by Elliot SmithI rarely come on here or any social media, but wanted to share our latest preprint of large-scale human single neuron recordings during an auditory working memory task: doi.org/10.1101/2025... I'm very grateful to our patients, my co-authors and the funders. And to anyone who reads it :-) 🧠📈🧵👇(1/5)
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- Reposted by Elliot SmithQuick thread on the BBC and the political and societal significance of recent developments: One of the main reasons the UK has historically been so much less polarised than the US, is that Britain has a shared source of information, consumed and trusted by most people regardless of their politics.
- Reposted by Elliot SmithWe are in the midst of an all-out attempt to exclude the global majority from science. Watson was clear about where he fell on that. I would trade every single dinner, meeting, seminar, fancy campus, and prestigious donor for my incredible friends to be safer. Their science is worth far more.
- Kubler-Ross ofrenda in Morelia, Michoacán. #diadelosmiertos 🏵️🧠
- Reposted by Elliot SmithI am recruiting a postdoc for a new NIMH-funded R01 using neural and behavioral models to understand anxious avoidance. Please share with anyone who may be interested! Link: faculty-emory.icims.com/jobs/155929/...
- Reposted by Elliot SmithI am recruiting a postdoc at UC Santa Barbara for an NIH-funded project on the organization of lateral PFC function--across emotion and cognition--using representational fMRI & TMS. I’d love to find someone w/ a background in cognitive control & computational modeling to complement our team! 🏝️ 🧠 🧲
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- Reposted by Elliot SmithMy co-authors have yet to move to Bluesky, so I'm pleased to announce our latest work has just been published in @nature.com Neuroscience. Amazing work led by Junheng Li, revealing that falling asleep follows a predictable bifurcation pattern #neuroskyence #sleep www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Elliot Smith🚨 We are seeking a Digital Presence Coordinator! Open to psych/neuro grad students, postdocs & faculty who are passionate about improving fairness in peer review. Job details: 💻 Managing website, socials, newsletters 🕒 4–8 hrs/month | 💵 $500 honorarium | 📅 1-year term Apply 👉 go.iu.edu/8vxh
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- Reposted by Elliot SmithOne last reminder that I’m recruiting a graduate student through the Cognition & Neural Science area @utah.edu this Fall! The lab uses MRI to study healthy cognitive aging across the adult lifespan and will start assessing factors that moderate cognitive aging (air pollution, cardiovascular health).
- Yay, thanks so much for sharing this! 🥳 I am excited to be starting my new lab this Fall! I’ll be reviewing applications this cycle for 1-2 graduate students to start in Fall 2026. More information about applications can be found here: psych.utah.edu/graduate/
- Reposted by Elliot SmithWant the freedom of a fancy fellowship, but not the year-long wait or arduous application? Come join my lab! Work on neuroscience and AI, explore your creativity, be independent or work closely with me, collaborate widely, and have a lot of fun! my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
- Reposted by Elliot Smith📢 Thrilled to share our paper is out now in @natcomms.nature.com Shared computations underlie how we acquire actions that are mutually beneficial, instrumentally harmful (benefits self at the expense of others), altruistic (benefit others at the expense of self), or mutually costly 🧵 rdcu.be/eL8mZ
- Yep! Nailed it! Have any Halloween plans?
- Reposted by Elliot SmithApply to become a CSHL-Simons Fellow in Neuroscience! Run your own lab, pursue bold ideas, join a highly collaborative community! All areas including experimental or computational neuro, including NeuroAI & systems PhD required; ≤~1 yr postdoc www.cshl.edu/about-us/car...
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- Reposted by Elliot SmithRate and noise in human amygdala drive increased exploration in aversive learning www.nature.com/articles/s41... - another example where noise is exploited as a tunable resource to enable exploration
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- Reposted by Elliot SmithWhat happens in the brain when we manipulate our thoughts? We asked 30 epilepsy patients to mentally invert short melodies. Intracerebral #iEEG recordings suggest brain synchrony and sensory inhibition are key for mental manipulation: doi.org/10.1101/2025... #neuroskyence #musicscience
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- Happy Diwali, to all yee! 🪔
- Had to vertically concatenate my SfN app screenshot this year, nbd. Come check out the innovative & rigorous human neuroscience that all the neurosmiths & collaborators are doing. #sfn2025 #SfN25
- Reposted by Elliot SmithR.I.P. ICON D’Angelo 🙏🏾🕊️
- Reposted by Elliot SmithCurious how cognitive computational models might shed light on question in mental health? Come dive into hands-on tutorials, modeling, and clinical applications during our 3-day workshop 👾 🧠
- No way! 😏
- Reposted by Elliot SmithI'm recruiting grad students!! 🎓 The CoDec Lab @ NYU (codec-lab.github.io) is looking for PhD students (Fall 2026) interested in computational approaches to social cognition & problem solving 🧠 Applications through Psych (tinyurl.com/nyucp) are due Dec 1. Reach out with Qs & please repost! 🙏
