David Robbe
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davidrobbe.bsky.social
David Robbe
@davidrobbe.bsky.social
380 followers 420 following 25 posts
Neuroscientist at Institut de Neurobiologie de la Méditerannée (Marseille).
Basal ganglia, time, effort, foraging, vigor, motor control.
Leaning toward philosophy (obsessed with Henri Bergson)
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by David Robbe
brainapps.bsky.social
Super pleased with this one, led by the amazing PhD student and foraging expert @emmavscholey.bsky.social!
markdhumphries.bsky.social Mark D Humphries @markdhumphries.bsky.social · 3d
🧪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
November 12, 2025 at 8:07 PM
Reposted by David Robbe
russpoldrack.org
Project structure for scientific coding projects
- the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series open.substack.com/pub/russpold...
Project structure for scientific coding projects
Better Code, Better Science: Chapter 6, Part 3
open.substack.com
November 11, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by David Robbe
jayvanbavel.bsky.social
The race to churn out papers is a systemic problem.

Early career scholars are desperate to get more papers to compete in the academic job market. This can make it hard for faculty mentors hard to reduce their output unless they shrink their lab (which removes opportunities from next generation).
November 11, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by David Robbe
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by David Robbe
runewberg.bsky.social
New preprint:

Neural manifolds that orchestrate walking and stopping

Here we develop a new theory for neural generation of walking and how it can stop- Next we test the theory using Neuropixels probes in the lumber spinal cord of freely moving rats. See more:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
November 9, 2025 at 9:33 PM
davidrobbe.bsky.social
A yr ago, I wrote a piece about what is becoming a quasi-obsession in neuroscience: internal models/representations. I’m kind of stuck and not sure what to do with it. Meanwhile, I came across 2 excellent "critical" papers on the same topic by @olivia.science and @smellosopher.bsky.social 🙏💪 :
November 11, 2025 at 11:10 AM
davidrobbe.bsky.social
I haven’t posted much here since leaving Twitter/X, but I feel a growing need to share again papers and thoughts about science, the brain, and our too often absurd academic life . My feed hasn’t been very exciting so far, so let’s see if posting and interacting more helps
November 11, 2025 at 10:40 AM
Reposted by David Robbe
hugospiers.bsky.social
New preprint from Satoshi Kuroki & Sébastien Royer

Grid cells encode reward distance during path integration in cue-rich environments

www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7...
October 22, 2025 at 9:43 AM
Reposted by David Robbe
adrianhaith.bsky.social
New Pre-Print:
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

We’re all familiar with having to practice a new skill to get better at it, but what really happens during practice? The answer, I propose, is reinforcement learning - specifically policy-gradient reinforcement learning.

Overview 🧵 below...
Policy-Gradient Reinforcement Learning as a General Theory of Practice-Based Motor Skill Learning
Mastering any new skill requires extensive practice, but the computational principles underlying this learning are not clearly understood. Existing theories of motor learning can explain short-term ad...
www.biorxiv.org
October 20, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Reposted by David Robbe
markdhumphries.bsky.social
🚨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...
Home - The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging
uobevents.eventsair.com
October 13, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Reposted by David Robbe
zamakany.bsky.social
Can one bring together Reinforcement learning and Drift Diffusion models to understand collective foraging ?

Congrads to Jonathan Marienhagen , Lisa Blum Moyse and Dominik Deffner on this new study. Very happy that I was part of this collaboration.

Preprint here: osf.io/preprints/ps...
September 16, 2025 at 10:14 AM
Reposted by David Robbe
samuelmoore.org
I have an op-ed out today in @resprofnews.bsky.social introducing my new book on the commercialisation of open access publishing.
Make academic publishing a commons, not a market - Research Professional News
Commercialisation has thwarted the promise of openness—it’s time for new priorities, says Samuel Moore
www.researchprofessionalnews.com
September 11, 2025 at 10:27 AM
Reposted by David Robbe
wiringthebrain.bsky.social
Here's a link to the paper: Beyond Mechanism—Extending Our Concepts of Causation in Neuroscience onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Beyond Mechanism—Extending Our Concepts of Causation in Neuroscience
The search for neural mechanisms of behaviour often relies on a synchronic, driving view of causation, where neural activity drives more neural activity, which eventually drives behaviour. The real c...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
September 11, 2025 at 7:16 PM
davidrobbe.bsky.social
It is simply amazing how Djokovic can so often anticipate where Alcaraz, one of the most creative players, will direct his next shot. Perception intertwined with action. This match is just incredible...
September 5, 2025 at 8:47 PM
Reposted by David Robbe
markdhumphries.bsky.social
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
uobevents.eventsair.com
August 18, 2025 at 8:28 AM
Reposted by David Robbe
sergeahmed.bsky.social
Status, humiliation, and expert knowledge

A must-read for my fellow experts who want to better understand why so many people proudly reject what we have to offer in favor of common sense.

Get ready to look in the mirror!

www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/status-cla...
Status, class, and the crisis of expertise
By celebrating "common sense" over expert authority, populism performs a dramatic status inversion. It gifts uneducated voters the power of knowledge and deflates those who look down on them.
www.conspicuouscognition.com
June 1, 2025 at 10:42 AM
Reposted by David Robbe
neural-reckoning.org
There's a movement in neuroscience suggesting we should be pursuing bigger bets with larger teams. I think there's a case for doing a bit of this, but I think it's a bad idea to prioritise it for two reasons, and a good case for saying we should be moving in the exact opposite direction. 🧠🧪
December 18, 2024 at 2:50 PM
davidrobbe.bsky.social
First post on Bluesky!

Had a great time chatting with @braininspired (Paul Middlebrooks) on his podcast about the conceptual and experimental issues related to the perception of time, and how Bergson's philosophy of the living could be helpful.
1/2
February 16, 2025 at 11:01 AM