Richard Gao
W1 (Assistant) Professor of CS & Math at Goethe University Frankfurt.
AI x neuroscience.
🌊 gao-unit.com
- A few months ago I was shortlisted for a research group leader grant and so I’m giving a presentation to a panel of experts in a few days. Get ready because immediately after that I’m gonna need each of you to cross fingers, say a prayer, sprinkle salt over your shoulder, perform incantations, etc.
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[Not loaded yet]- 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 ;)
- The extended version of my thesis procrastination project/subcortex visualization package is out now in both Python and R, now that I’ve graduated 🤠 This figure shows the 9 atlases included (and counting)! Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Website: anniegbryant.github.io/subcortex_vi...
- Our latest preprint on how regional cellular, molecular, and other forms of heterogeneity shape macroscopic wave dynamics is now out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... For a full thread, see: x.com/_victorbarne...
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- dark-eyed junco going full borb #birds
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- he was shot shortly after helping a woman who was pushed by ICE
- 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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- Reminder that this is happening today.
- This Thursday at 3PM (UTC), we'll host @barabasi.bsky.social at the Making Connections seminar series. I'm sure it'll be a very stimulating and inspiring talk, so if you'd like to join, register via the link below: sites.google.com/view/makingc...
- Ripple 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
- I woke up today and the Detroit Pistons are first in the East. what year is this??
- So much ammo to get what they're missing too! The glorious times of Killian Hayes are long gone 😓
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- Interpreting EEG requires understanding how the skull smears electrical fields as they propagate from the cortex. I made a browser-based simulator for my EEG class to visualize how dipole depth/orientation change the topomap. dbrang.github.io/EEG-Dipole-D... Github page: github.com/dbrang/EEG-D...
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- Writing is thinking Outsourcing the entire task of writing to LLMs will deprive us of the essential creative task of interpreting our findings and generating a deeper theoretical understanding of the world.
- Not sure it needs to be said (or maybe wild that it does), but I don't think "we" should "acquire" Greenland.
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- main 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
- @kordinglab.bsky.social and I ran a summer school last year to help young profs (<5 yrs) in systems/comp neuro thrive. compneurosci.com/Neuro4Pros/i... It was great! Now we want to know if you'd be interested in participating if we did this again this year? Let us know!
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- Pre-COSYNE Brainhack 2026 – Join Us in Lisbon! March 10–11, 2026 • Lisbon, Portugal pre-cosyne-brainhack.github.io/hackathon2026/ Kick off COSYNE week with two days of hands-on, team-based hacking around real electrophysiology data, open tools, and reproducible workflows. #brainhack #cosyne2026
- This year’s Brainhack draws inspiration from CON²PHYS: same dataset, same questions, many truths? Expect hacking sessions, mini-presentations, discussions on reproducibility and a welcoming environment for all skill levels. Apply now (limited spots): pre-cosyne-brainhack.github.io/hackathon202...
- Want to get the data out of a PDF figure? As in, the actual data – not a rough trace-along-the-lines version? I made an app you might like: adamkucharski.github.io/pdf2plot/ It all started a few years ago... 🧵
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- Happy 2026 everyone! Two freshly minted PhDs 🧑🎓emerged from our lab at the end of last year. We congratulate Dr Julius Vetter (@vetterj.bsky.social) and Dr Guy Moss (@gmoss13.bsky.social)! Here seen celebrating with the lab 🎳. 1/3
- Shout-out to one of my coworkers who thought "labubu" was slang for lobotomy
- 🚨📜+🧵🚨 Very excited about this work showing that people with no hand function following a spinal cord injury can control the activity of motor units from those muscles to perform 1D, 2D and 3D tasks, play video games, or navigate a virtual wheelchair By a wonderful team co-mentored w Dario Farina
- New preprint! We show that people with tetraplegic spinal cord injury can use their residual motor unit activity to achieve up to three dimensional control using non-invasive high-density surface EMG With my co-first authors Xingchen Yang and Ciara Gibbs www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/13
- Wanna compare dynamics across neural data, RNNs, or dynamical systems? We got a fast and furious method🏎️ The 1st preprint of my PhD 🥳 fast dynamical similarity analysis (fastDSA): 📜: arxiv.org/abs/2511.22828 💻: github.com/CMC-lab/fast... I’ll be @cosynemeeting.bsky.social - happy to chat 😉
- Thrilled to see the first preprint of the lab out 🤩 Check it out if you need to compare dynamics in your data and RNN (or any other combinations of dynamical systems)!
- Wanna compare dynamics across neural data, RNNs, or dynamical systems? We got a fast and furious method🏎️ The 1st preprint of my PhD 🥳 fast dynamical similarity analysis (fastDSA): 📜: arxiv.org/abs/2511.22828 💻: github.com/CMC-lab/fast... I’ll be @cosynemeeting.bsky.social - happy to chat 😉
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- I will die on this hill over and over until it becomes a mountain
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View full threadI have lived many lives
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- OK I should read it carefully instead of jumping to results :) Perhaps I also misinterpreted the hill Richard will die on, which could be that LFP can be as useful or more than spikes for decoding.
- just my perception, but I think people claiming spikes >> LFP rarely cite empirical evidence favoring one way or the other, but make that statement reflexively. tbc I don't think LFP >> spikes universally, the much more interesting question is when one or the other, like this paper is showing.
- Fair, but why compare one neuron to an LFP channel reflecting tons of neurons? In my understanding this result shows that for low-D things like arousal or novelty, average pop rate is good enough. For specific patterns of spiking, we want individual neurons. Do people diasgree on this?
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- We’ll call it Mount Richard, and advise no one digs too deep or they’ll find your many skeletons 🥲💀🏔️🪦
- 🚨 New preprint! Why do some insights from spikes translate to field potentials while others don't? In this paper we compare visual memory representations in spikes and LFPs to propose a general framework that answers this question. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵 (1/10) 🧠🟦 🧠💻
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View full threadAnd this rule generalizes beyond visual memory! Sorting previous studies by whether they examined magnitude or pattern-of-spikes codes demonstrates that magnitude codes have consistently been found to be aligned between spikes and LFPs, while heterogenous pattern-of-spikes codes have not. (8/10)
- These results provide a framework for translating between spikes and LFPs, highlighting the scenarios likely to be fruitful for translation. I call this “basic translational neuroscience” and I’m excited to continue with this approach in my research moving forward! (9/10)
- We started by examining a number of variables for which we’ve previously linked spiking neural representations to visual memory behavior: novelty, recency, and memorability. For all three variables, we found a strong correspondence between the signals measured in spikes and HGA. (4/10)
- Not only were the signals well aligned, but we found that novelty signals were STRONGER in HGA than in spikes, requiring at least 4-fold less data to reached matched discriminability of novel from repeated images. In this case, you're better off with one channel of HGA than one neuron. (5/10)
