Richard Naud

How are the fluctuations in electric field organized across the whole brain? We analyzed the 3.4 M samples from the international brain lab using a combination of deep learning and graph theory. We found a surprising structure made of communities and landmarks. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

The olfactory cortex doesn't store smells. It reshapes the space they live in. We wrote a fun review on representational manifolds in PCx with Rainer Friedrich doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

1/9 New paper led by Michael Hauri & Peter Buttaroni: “Learning Commute-Time-Preserving World Models for Planning.” We show how to shape a world model's latent space so its distances mean something for planning.🧵 📄 arxiv.org/abs/2610.01373 💻 github.com/fmi-basel/co... 🌐 ctwm-website.github.io

In brain-computer interfacing, clever and adaptive decoders help brains learn complex tasks faster. These can impact the nature of solutions learned by the brain. Our new paper is one of the first attempts to study this effect. W/ @neuroamyo.bsky.social and team www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In 1992 I introduced Tom Stoppard to Bob May, who'd put chaos into biology. A year later I was reviewing Arcadia. It closes Saturday, at the theatre that now carries Stoppard's name. My story, plus my lost 1993 review rogerhighfield.substack.com/p/on-the-ori...

I was floored to hear there are chemogenetics trials in humans. We're engineering neurons to have synthetic receptors that can be activated using normally inert drugs! How big of a deal is this for epilepsy, PD, pain? I did a deep dive into human chemogenetics www.neuroai.science/p/the-race-t...

The Ferrier Medal and Lecture 2027 is awarded to Professor Kenneth Daniel Harris for his contributions to neuroscience by unifying experimental neurophysiology with advanced analytical methods and for pioneering methods that allow recording from thousands of neurons. #RSMedals https://bit.ly/4qCJZRo

How does the brain continually adapt? Fresh in @natureportfolio.nature.com our super exciting collaboration with @mark-j-wagner.bsky.social showing that the cerebellum contextualises cortical dynamics enable multi-task learning: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Episode #44 in #TheoreticalNeurosciencePodcast: On how energy determines where proteins are produced in neurons – with Tatjana Tchumatchenko theoreticalneuroscience.no/thn44 Ion channel proteins can be produced in the soma or where they are needed. How do neurons decide?

Nice paper out from @kohitij.bsky.social's group on integration of motion and object info in primate cortex, with some evidence that predictive learning is a potential means to achieve more similar models: arxiv.org/abs/2608.23790 #neuroscience #NeuroAI 🧪

These images of First Nations community members evacuating Collins, Ontario on motorboats are absolutely surreal www.facebook.com/reel/1548244...

MIT Professor Susumu Tonegawa, renowned molecular biologist and Nobel laureate, dies at 86 news.mit.edu/2026/mit-pro... #neuroscience

So excited to be part of this one! Now officially out in Annual Review of Neuroscience 🎉 www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

New in PLOS Comp Bio, cool work from @timothyoleary.bsky.social showing that representational "drift" (lol, sorry for the scare quotes, Tim!), follows non-Gaussian statistics that can be beneficial for adaptive decoding: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol... #neuroscience 🧪

When reality surpasses fiction! Top: fictional forecast for August 2050, broadcast by French TV in 2014 to warn about the consequences of global warming. Bottom: Real French forecast for yesterday, June 22, 2026.

Our latest story is finally in preprint! 🧠✨ How does the brain solve the (hierarchical) credit assignment problem efficiently? Cell-type-specific cortical feedback holds the key, closely approximating backprop. Paper: doi.org/10.64898/202...

People like to dunk on MATLAB now, but it’s hard to overstate how large an advance it was at the time and the impact it has had on scientific computing. RIP Cleve Moler www.nytimes.com/2026/06/11/s...

Cool to see this new work relating bursts and learning in more physiological details out on Biorxiv: doi.org/10.64898/202... @somnirons.bsky.social

Recent work from the lab: big contrast between the synaptic dynamics of excitatory and inhibitory synapses!

Incredibly grateful to @cmiehl.bsky.social and @gjorjulijana.bsky.social for their thoughtful and spot-on Preview "Novelty beyond counting" of our recent work in Neuron with @modirshanechi.bsky.social and @gerstnerlab.bsky.social! 🧠✨ It's a real honor 🙏 www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

How do neural circuits in the brain implement normalization? 🧠 In our new paper, we show that just normalizing sensory input isn't enough. Crucially, we must also normalize the error signals! 🧵👇 Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2603.17676

To accompany my textbook (Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience) and the class I taught this semester, I'm open-sourcing my lectures slides: gershmanlab.com/lectures.html I'll continue to update these as I improve them.

Going from neural activity to blood flow just became easier! Two brainwide populations, each with its neurovascular coupling. (But going backwards... is now a tad more complicated.) By @agnesland.bsky.social & team. Thanks @intlbrainlab.bsky.social @wellcometrust.bsky.social @simonsfoundation.org

Nice summary of our recent work on neural population geometry and generalization across multiple tasks with shared latent structure. Thank you @natmesanash.bsky.social and @thetransmitter.bsky.social for the great article! Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

For those interested in the history of psychedelic research… I wrote a narrative piece describing studies of psychedelic effects on serotonergic neurons in the dorsal raphe, from late 1960s to 1980s: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Categorization is ‘baked’ into the brain — a Perspective by Lisa Feldman Barrett & Earl K. Miller @lisafeldmanbarrett.com @earlkmiller.bsky.social #neuroscience #neuroskyence www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Functional synaptic connectivity shapes spine stability in the hippocampus "Spines with large responses exhibited larger volume and higher stability compared to unresponsive spines." www.nature.com/articles/s41...

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Stoked this is finally out! We ask: how can we simulate the brain from the bottom up? It's not sufficient to grab the connectome and wire it up in silico! We need 1) ultrastructure 2) (causal) calibration data 3) functional data. Then we can build a simulation compiler. 1/

Episode #39 in #TheoreticalNeurosciencePodcast: On modeling neural population activity with mean-field models – with Tilo Schwalger theoreticalneuroscience.no/thn39 How can mean‑field models be systematically derived from the underlying microscopic dynamics of individual neurons?

An important piece on error-based learning in biological networks

We've created a tool to visualize the map of electric signals (LFPs) in the whole mouse brain. Different brain areas have electrical fluctuations that look more like a select number of areas, thus creating a map. nebulawang.github.io/brain-viz/ Details in this paper doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Come see our Cosyne 2026 posters! Friday: 2-069 (Atena & Manu), 2-096 (Julian), Saturday: 3-091 (Julia) More info zenkelab.org/2026/03/cosy...

I thought this was an exciting new theoretical perspective www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

Excited to be at #Cosyne2026! I'll be presenting my poster tomorrow during the Thursday session: [1-106] “A biologically inspired predictive coding algorithm with multiplicative and additive feedback”. With @colin-bredenberg.bsky.social and @tyrellturing.bsky.social

I’ll be presenting this work (plus some exciting new follow-up analyses!) tonight at poster [1-019], “A unifying theory of receptive field heterogeneity predicts hippocampal spatial tuning.” Come by and say hi! #cosyne26

"neuro AI reckoning: can we move beyond the metaphor?"https://groundedneuro.substack.com/p/22-years-of-brain-science-what-cosyne?r=6l8iaw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true&_src_ref=go.bsky.app

this is great!

Are you at #cosyne2026 and looking for a postdoc position? CATNIP = Neural Dynamics Lab is hiring! catniplab.github.io/postdoc-hiri...

The deadline for applying to the Methods in Computational Neuroscience summer course at MBL in Woods Hole is approaching (March 16)! An exciting course with an amazing lineup of lecturers in a beautiful location www.mbl.edu/education/ad...

Neuroscientist who is great with new media and cares about scientific rigor? DM me. We want to hire someone like you (part time).

Quite impressed with the results reported here, a cerebellar learning signal affects neocortex plasticity. In the context of credit assignment, this suggest a cross-system coordination of plasticity: elifesciences.org/articles/109...

I recommend this school to anyone interested in computation in the brain - it receives excellent reviews year after year, it is highly interactive and social, and the setting is remarkable.

New paper alert! 🚨 We found that the brain's compass is remarkably stable at two scales 1️⃣ the system maintains its internal organization for weeks 2️⃣ It "remembers" its orientation for weeks, even after a single visit This may be key to how the brain aligns its other maps. Paper: rdcu.be/e3waP

My lab is looking to recruit 1-2 paid summer interns to do wet lab work on learning in a unicellular organism (Stentor coeruleus). You can apply here: forms.gle/b47WpSobjFjo...

Short-term plasticity is regulated by post synaptic mechanisms. Such a fun project with @danielchoquet.bsky.social and team! can01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

There are approximately 1000 research groups on the #NIH campuses, including Steve Rosenberg's research group, which develops groundbreaking T-cell therapies for cancer. Effectively all of those groups were suddenly prohibited from buying any (!) supplies last year. That is on the leadership.

We think cortex might function like a JEPA. It looks like prediction errors in layer 2/3 are not computed against input (as is the idea in predictive processing), but against a representation in latent space (i.e. like in a JEPA arxiv.org/abs/2301.08243 or RPL doi.org/10.1101/2025...).

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)

Il est essentiel de développer une réglementation efficace, des garde-fous sociaux et des solutions techniques comme celles que nous développons à @law-zero.bsky.social pour éviter les risques de l’IA tout en développant ses applications positives. @lemonde.fr www.lemonde.fr/economie/art...