Saul Kato
@focolab.bsky.social
I study things that think. Neuroscience professor at UCSF. Foundations of Cognition Lab. www.focolab.org. medium.com/@saulkato
These university cash “deals” to restore federal funding are worrisome. They seem more naïve than pragmatic. Please no more.
July 31, 2025 at 3:40 AM
These university cash “deals” to restore federal funding are worrisome. They seem more naïve than pragmatic. Please no more.
Preprint posted for Kevin Zhou's awesome development in the Waller Lab of a gigapixel-scale microscope using a low-cost sensor array, along with Muneki Ikeda.
www.focolab.org/post/large-s...
www.focolab.org/post/large-s...
"Large-scale compressive microscopy via diffractive multiplexing across a sensor array" preprint released
Kevin Zhou, former postdoc in the collaborating lab of Laura Waller at Berkeley, and who recently started his own lab at University of Michigan, developed this way to achieve gigapixel-resolution high...
www.focolab.org
July 25, 2025 at 11:11 PM
Preprint posted for Kevin Zhou's awesome development in the Waller Lab of a gigapixel-scale microscope using a low-cost sensor array, along with Muneki Ikeda.
www.focolab.org/post/large-s...
www.focolab.org/post/large-s...
We built StarDist to detect cells in volumetric microscopy and jointly infer closed curved parametric surfaces for each cell. It's an example of an interpretable machine learning approach. More detail in the blog post and preprint.
www.focolab.org/post/surfdis...
www.focolab.org/post/surfdis...
"SurfDist" pre-print posted
We developed an "interpretable machine learning" system to find and characterize blobs in volumetric images, such as microscopy images of cells, something we need to do all the time in our lab. The no...
www.focolab.org
July 14, 2025 at 6:16 PM
We built StarDist to detect cells in volumetric microscopy and jointly infer closed curved parametric surfaces for each cell. It's an example of an interpretable machine learning approach. More detail in the blog post and preprint.
www.focolab.org/post/surfdis...
www.focolab.org/post/surfdis...
Here’s a nice Nature news article on efforts to establish the tardigrade as a new model organism for neuroscience.
www.focolab.org/post/nature-...
www.focolab.org/post/nature-...
Nature does a news piece on our tardigrade work
This is a nice news article by Benjamin Plackett in Nature covering our science and community building work to establish tardigrades as a new model organism for neuroscience. Kudos to postdoc Ana Lyon...
www.focolab.org
July 11, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Here’s a nice Nature news article on efforts to establish the tardigrade as a new model organism for neuroscience.
www.focolab.org/post/nature-...
www.focolab.org/post/nature-...
An instant classic by Zheng and Meister (@mameister4.bsky.social): www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
"...10^8... the ratio between peripheral information processing and the overall throughput of the brain. Numerically speaking, this may be the largest unexplained number in brain science. "
"...10^8... the ratio between peripheral information processing and the overall throughput of the brain. Numerically speaking, this may be the largest unexplained number in brain science. "
The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?
Zheng and Meister write about the paradoxical slowness of human behavior. Although
our senses gather data at 109 bits/s, our overall information throughput is only 10
bits/s. This stark contrast touch...
www.cell.com
June 18, 2025 at 9:30 PM
An instant classic by Zheng and Meister (@mameister4.bsky.social): www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
"...10^8... the ratio between peripheral information processing and the overall throughput of the brain. Numerically speaking, this may be the largest unexplained number in brain science. "
"...10^8... the ratio between peripheral information processing and the overall throughput of the brain. Numerically speaking, this may be the largest unexplained number in brain science. "
so glad websites are back.
June 6, 2025 at 6:32 AM
so glad websites are back.
Here's a curious result we found from modeling human problem solving as the composition of past remembered dynamical systems. www.focolab.org/post/recombi...
"Recombinant dynamical systems" pre-print posted
This is an idea and a small but curious result that I've been sitting on for a very long time. Finally got around to sharing it. It the simplest possible model I could come up with for experience-base...
www.focolab.org
May 20, 2025 at 4:54 PM
Here's a curious result we found from modeling human problem solving as the composition of past remembered dynamical systems. www.focolab.org/post/recombi...
Here's a nice article on our tardigrade work in the Transmitter: www.focolab.org/post/article...
Article in the Transmitter on our tardigrade work
Dori Grijseels wrote a great article about our work and preprint on tardigrades for neuroscience. https://www.thetransmitter.org/animal-models/how-tiny-tardigrades-could-help-tackle-systems-neuroscien...
www.focolab.org
March 13, 2025 at 4:03 PM
Here's a nice article on our tardigrade work in the Transmitter: www.focolab.org/post/article...
Reposted by Saul Kato
Congrats to the Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience at UCSF Collaborative Awardees!
🔬 @focolab.bsky.social, Christoph Kirst: AI-driven 3D tracking of object perception in C.elegans
🧠 Robert Stroud, Robert Edwards, James Holton: Mapping SVs w/ cryo-ET #KavliNeuro
kavliifn.ucsf.edu/grants
🔬 @focolab.bsky.social, Christoph Kirst: AI-driven 3D tracking of object perception in C.elegans
🧠 Robert Stroud, Robert Edwards, James Holton: Mapping SVs w/ cryo-ET #KavliNeuro
kavliifn.ucsf.edu/grants
Grants | ucsf-kavli
kavliifn.ucsf.edu
March 3, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Congrats to the Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience at UCSF Collaborative Awardees!
🔬 @focolab.bsky.social, Christoph Kirst: AI-driven 3D tracking of object perception in C.elegans
🧠 Robert Stroud, Robert Edwards, James Holton: Mapping SVs w/ cryo-ET #KavliNeuro
kavliifn.ucsf.edu/grants
🔬 @focolab.bsky.social, Christoph Kirst: AI-driven 3D tracking of object perception in C.elegans
🧠 Robert Stroud, Robert Edwards, James Holton: Mapping SVs w/ cryo-ET #KavliNeuro
kavliifn.ucsf.edu/grants
Data contamination (validation data leaking into training data) is a critical problem for the whole approach of (static) performance benchmarks to test large AI models. This issue needs to be surfaced more. This article for example, completely neglects it. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/t...
When A.I. Passes This Test, Look Out
The creators of a new test called “Humanity’s Last Exam” argue we may soon lose the ability to create tests hard enough for A.I. models.
www.nytimes.com
February 12, 2025 at 9:06 PM
Data contamination (validation data leaking into training data) is a critical problem for the whole approach of (static) performance benchmarks to test large AI models. This issue needs to be surfaced more. This article for example, completely neglects it. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/t...
Prediction: AI will ultimately drive the renaissance of the fourth estate, the press, as we seek authoritative sources of information and trusted interpretation.
February 11, 2025 at 2:50 AM
Prediction: AI will ultimately drive the renaissance of the fourth estate, the press, as we seek authoritative sources of information and trusted interpretation.
It has become impossible to distinguish real newspaper headlines from Onion headlines. We need a name for this era
January 23, 2025 at 2:35 AM
It has become impossible to distinguish real newspaper headlines from Onion headlines. We need a name for this era
Our paper on WormID is out. Moral: building a multi-lab data corpus boosts generalization and performance of ML labeling algorithms. We extended the Neurodata Without Borders format to support this. Resource at wormid.org. www.focolab.org/post/our-pap...
Our paper "Unifying community whole-brain imaging datasets enables robust neuron identification and reveals determinants of neuron position in C. elegans" is out.
https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-methods/fulltext/S2667-2375(24)00354-0Congrats Yutaka and the rest of the team! It has been a fantastic collaborative effort and we hope the community continues to bu...
www.focolab.org
January 21, 2025 at 5:28 PM
Our paper on WormID is out. Moral: building a multi-lab data corpus boosts generalization and performance of ML labeling algorithms. We extended the Neurodata Without Borders format to support this. Resource at wormid.org. www.focolab.org/post/our-pap...
For our inaugural post on bsky, we're happy to share our preprint on tardigrades as a new model organism for neuroscience. Exciting times for these little critters! www.focolab.org/post/our-pre...
Our preprint "The tardigrade as an emerging model organism for systems neuroscience" is up.
We have been making the case for some time that tardigrades, aka water bears, would be an amazing new model organism for certain big systems neuroscience questions. We put this into a detailed paper o...
www.focolab.org
January 14, 2025 at 7:09 PM
For our inaugural post on bsky, we're happy to share our preprint on tardigrades as a new model organism for neuroscience. Exciting times for these little critters! www.focolab.org/post/our-pre...