Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
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gatsbyucl.bsky.social
Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
@gatsbyucl.bsky.social
We study the mathematical principles of learning, perception & action in brains & machines. Funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. Based at UCL. www.ucl.ac.uk/gatsby
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
💬 AI for Good Webinar Series 'From Molecules to Models' - today with @arthurgretton.bsky.social (@ucl.ac.uk, ELLIS Fellow) on causal effect estimation.

📅 Oct 29th
🕓 17:00-18:00 CET

🔗 Registration: aiforgood.itu.int/event/learn-...
ℹ️ More info: ellis.eu/news/continu...
October 29, 2025 at 8:45 AM
⏰ Deadline approaching for our PhD programmes!

👋 Apply by 3 Nov to join us and immerse yourself in world-class research and vibrant London life!

Gatsby Unit: ucl.ac.uk/life-science...

@sainsburywellcome.bsky.social: sainsburywellcome.org/web/content/...

Joint: www.ucl.ac.uk/life-science...
October 21, 2025 at 10:26 AM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
Looking forward to next week's Winter School on Causality and Explainable AI!

xai-winter-school.github.io
October 17, 2025 at 9:52 AM
Applying to the #ELLISPhD Program? If you are selecting a Gatsby Unit faculty member as your main supervisor, don't forget to apply to the Gatsby Unit PhD Programme in parallel. Our deadline is 3 Nov 2025.
👉 www.ucl.ac.uk/life-science...
ellis.eu ELLIS @ellis.eu · Oct 10
🎓 Ready to expand your horizons in #AI research? Do your PhD with 2 leading academic institutions across Europe and build your international network with the Academic Track in the #ELLISPhD Program.

Apply now via our central recruiting portal until Oct 31.

👉 All info: https://bit.ly/45DSe75
October 10, 2025 at 1:43 PM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
Congratulations to all the new SWC & @gatsbyucl.bsky.social PhD students for successfully completing Boot Camp!

We are delighted to welcome you to the community.

Students showcased their robots in our hotly anticipated annual @noblackboxes.bsky.social Robot Competition 🦾⚽💻
September 30, 2025 at 8:18 AM
🙋Are you interested in bridging theory & experiments?

Applications are now open for 2026 entry to the Gatsby Unit & SWC joint PhD programme.

Join us and be part of a vibrant research community!

💰 Fully-funded 4-year programme
ℹ️ www.ucl.ac.uk/life-science...

@sainsburywellcome.bsky.social
September 25, 2025 at 10:09 AM
Interested in a #PhD in machine learning & theoretical neuroscience?

Applications for 2026 entry to the Gatsby Unit PhD programme are open!

💰 Fully-funded 4-year programme
🤝 Close links to @sainsburywellcome.bsky.social
ℹ️ www.ucl.ac.uk/life-sciences/gatsby/study-and-work/gatsby-unit-phd-programme
September 23, 2025 at 9:48 AM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
A complete brain-wide activity map at single-cell resolution has been revealed for the first time.

Researchers recorded from 650,000+ neurons across 279 brain areas to track decision-making in mice.

Read the story:
🔗 www.sainsburywellcome.org/web/research...
September 3, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
Made possible only by the unique environment and amazing community at Janelia and the Gatsby. @hhmijanelia.bsky.social @gatsbyucl.bsky.social

Feedback, ideas, or requests for transgenic lines, protocols, and code are warmly welcome!
September 8, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
ProbNum 2025 Keynote 2 ``Gradient Flows on the Maximum Mean Discrepancy'' by @arthurgretton.bsky.social ( @gatsbyucl.bsky.social and Google DeepMind.

Slides available here: probnum25.github.io/keynotes
September 4, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
📢 ❗JOB OPPORTUNITY: Today is the closing date for this fantastic role we are funding at @gatsbyucl.bsky.social.
⏰ Apply before 23.59BST. 👇
JOB: We're recruiting for a 2-year post doc fellowship based at @gatsbyucl.bsky.social working with Prof Arthur Gretton to create new statistically efficient causal and interaction models with the aim of elucidating cellular interactions
⏰closing 27 August
👉 details: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
www.ucl.ac.uk
August 27, 2025 at 9:20 AM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
Aeon is a new platform for continuous brain and behaviour research in naturalistic environments — already used in 15+ projects, including long-term social learning studies.

🔗 www.sainsburywellcome.org/web/blog/new...
📄 Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
August 18, 2025 at 8:02 AM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
Are similar representations in neural nets evidence of shared computation? In new theory work w/ Lukas Braun (lukasbraun.com) & @saxelab.bsky.social, we prove that representational comparisons are ill-posed in general, unless networks are efficient.

@icmlconf.bsky.social @cogcompneuro.bsky.social
August 13, 2025 at 11:31 AM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
Main takeaway: Valid representational comparison relies on implicit assumptions (task-optimization *plus* efficient implementation). ⚠️ More work to do on making these assumptions explicit!

🧠 CCN poster (today): 2025.ccneuro.org/poster/?id=w...

📄 ICML paper (July): icml.cc/virtual/2025/poster/44890
ICML Poster Not all solutions are created equal: An analytical dissociation of functional and representational similarity in deep linear neural networksICML 2025
icml.cc
August 13, 2025 at 11:31 AM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
Our #CCN2025 GAC debate w/ @gretatuckute.bsky.social, Gemma Roig (www.cvai.cs.uni-frankfurt.de), Jacqueline Gottlieb (gottlieblab.com), Klaus Oberauer, @mschrimpf.bsky.social &‬ @brittawestner.bsky.social asks:

📊 What benchmarks are useful for cognitive science? 💭
2025.ccneuro.org/gac
August 13, 2025 at 7:01 AM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
Sequential kernel embedding for mediated and time-varying dose response curves

Appearing in Bernoulli:
projecteuclid.org/journals/ber...

with preprint here: arxiv.org/abs/2111.03950

...along with code!
github.com/liyuan9988/K...

Rahul Singh, Liyuan Xu
August 11, 2025 at 2:18 PM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
JOB: We're recruiting for a 2-year post doc fellowship based at @gatsbyucl.bsky.social working with Prof Arthur Gretton to create new statistically efficient causal and interaction models with the aim of elucidating cellular interactions
⏰closing 27 August
👉 details: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
www.ucl.ac.uk
August 6, 2025 at 11:29 AM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
Does the brain learn by gradient descent?

It's a pleasure to share our paper at @cp-cell.bsky.social, showing how mice learning over long timescales display key hallmarks of gradient descent (GD).

The culmination of my PhD supervised by @laklab.bsky.social, @saxelab.bsky.social and Rafal Bogacz!
Dopamine encodes deep network teaching signals for individual learning trajectories
Longitudinal tracking of long-term learning behavior and striatal dopamine reveals that dopamine teaching signals shape individually diverse yet systematic learning trajectories, captured mathematical...
www.cell.com
June 15, 2025 at 9:33 AM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
New from @sainsburywellcome.bsky.social, @gatsbyucl.bsky.social, NeuroGEARS & DataJoint:

Aeon - an open-source platform combining long-term neural recording with naturalistic behavioural tracking in enriched habitats.

📑 Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Aeon: an open-source platform to study the neural basis of ethological behaviours over naturalistic timescales
Ethological behaviours are a powerful tool for neuroscience since they leverage the robust neural computations shaped by the species' evolution to study the neural basis of high-level cognitive functi...
www.biorxiv.org
August 1, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
🎓Thrilled to share I’ve officially defended my PhD!🥳

At @gatsbyucl.bsky.social, my research explored how prior knowledge shapes neural representations.

I’m deeply grateful to my mentors, @saxelab.bsky.social and @caswell.bsky.social, my incredible collaborators, and everyone who supported me!
July 29, 2025 at 3:32 PM
🥳 Congratulations to Rodrigo Carrasco-Davison on passing his PhD viva with minor corrections! 🎉

📜 Principles of Optimal Learning Control in Biological and Artificial Agents.
July 21, 2025 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
Come chat about this at the poster @icmlconf.bsky.social, 11:00-13:30 on Wednesday in the West Exhibition Hall #W-902!
How does in-context learning emerge in attention models during gradient descent training?

Sharing our new Spotlight paper @icmlconf.bsky.social: Training Dynamics of In-Context Learning in Linear Attention
arxiv.org/abs/2501.16265

Led by Yedi Zhang with @aaditya6284.bsky.social and Peter Latham
July 15, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
Excited to share new work @icmlconf.bsky.social by Loek van Rossem exploring the development of computational algorithms in recurrent neural networks.

Hear it live tomorrow, Oral 1D, Tues 15 Jul West Exhibition Hall C: icml.cc/virtual/2025...

Paper: openreview.net/forum?id=3go...

(1/11)
ICML Poster Algorithm Development in Neural Networks: Insights from the Streaming Parity TaskICML 2025
icml.cc
July 14, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
Distributional diffusion models with scoring rules at #icml25

Fewer, larger denoising steps using distributional losses!

Wednesday 11am poster E-1910

arxiv.org/pdf/2502.02483

@vdebortoli.bsky.social
Galashov Guntupalli Zhou
@sirbayes.bsky.social
@arnauddoucet.bsky.social
July 14, 2025 at 12:57 PM
Reposted by Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
Accelerated Diffusion Models via Speculative Sampling, at #icml25 !

16:30 Tuesday July 15 poster E-3012

arxiv.org/abs/2501.05370

@vdebortoli.bsky.social Galashov @arnauddoucet.bsky.social
July 14, 2025 at 1:03 PM