Jay Hennig
@jhennig.bsky.social
Computational neuroscientist interested in how we learn, and dad to twin boys
Asst prof at Baylor College of Medicine
https://www.henniglab.org/
Asst prof at Baylor College of Medicine
https://www.henniglab.org/
Reposted by Jay Hennig
What I expected, of course, is that memory for these passages would improve systematically from 0th order to full text, but that's not quite what happened:
November 13, 2025 at 5:22 PM
What I expected, of course, is that memory for these passages would improve systematically from 0th order to full text, but that's not quite what happened:
Just realized that Colab Pro is free for students/teachers! Just sharing this in case I wasn't the only one...
colab.research.google.com/signup
colab.research.google.com/signup
Colab Paid Services Pricing
colab.research.google.com
November 11, 2025 at 9:24 PM
Just realized that Colab Pro is free for students/teachers! Just sharing this in case I wasn't the only one...
colab.research.google.com/signup
colab.research.google.com/signup
Reposted by Jay Hennig
Connectome datasets alone are generally not sufficient to predict neural activity. However, pairing connectivity information with neural recordings can produce accurate predictions of activity in unrecorded neurons
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Prediction of neural activity in connectome-constrained recurrent networks - Nature Neuroscience
The authors show that connectome datasets alone are generally not sufficient to predict neural activity. However, pairing connectivity information with neural recordings can produce accurate predictio...
www.nature.com
November 10, 2025 at 10:12 PM
Connectome datasets alone are generally not sufficient to predict neural activity. However, pairing connectivity information with neural recordings can produce accurate predictions of activity in unrecorded neurons
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Jay Hennig
This holiday season, give Jeff Bezos and Amazon the gift of zero dollars. 🥰
November 10, 2025 at 6:47 PM
This holiday season, give Jeff Bezos and Amazon the gift of zero dollars. 🥰
Reposted by Jay Hennig
Our next paper on comparing dynamical systems (with special interest to artificial and biological neural networks) is out!! Joint work with @annhuang42.bsky.social , as well as @satpreetsingh.bsky.social , @leokoz8.bsky.social , Ila Fiete, and @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social : arxiv.org/pdf/2510.25943
November 10, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Our next paper on comparing dynamical systems (with special interest to artificial and biological neural networks) is out!! Joint work with @annhuang42.bsky.social , as well as @satpreetsingh.bsky.social , @leokoz8.bsky.social , Ila Fiete, and @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social : arxiv.org/pdf/2510.25943
Reposted by Jay Hennig
Birds are both intelligent and incredibly agile, yet they are quite small. How do they achieve this with their little brains?
They have twice as many neurons per brain mass than mammals, including primates.
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
They have twice as many neurons per brain mass than mammals, including primates.
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
November 7, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Birds are both intelligent and incredibly agile, yet they are quite small. How do they achieve this with their little brains?
They have twice as many neurons per brain mass than mammals, including primates.
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
They have twice as many neurons per brain mass than mammals, including primates.
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
Reposted by Jay Hennig
A tad late (announcements coming) but very happy to share the latest developments in my previous preprint!
Previously, we show that neural representations for control of movement are largely distinct following supervised or reinforcement learning. The latter most closely matches NHP recordings.
Previously, we show that neural representations for control of movement are largely distinct following supervised or reinforcement learning. The latter most closely matches NHP recordings.
Here’s our latest work at @glajoie.bsky.social and @mattperich.bsky.social ‘s labs! Excited to see this out.
We used a combination of neural recordings & modelling to show that RL yields neural dynamics closer to biology, with useful continual learning properties.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
We used a combination of neural recordings & modelling to show that RL yields neural dynamics closer to biology, with useful continual learning properties.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Brain-like neural dynamics for behavioral control develop through reinforcement learning
During development, neural circuits are shaped continuously as we learn to control our bodies. The ultimate goal of this process is to produce neural dynamics that enable the rich repertoire of behavi...
www.biorxiv.org
November 6, 2025 at 2:10 AM
A tad late (announcements coming) but very happy to share the latest developments in my previous preprint!
Previously, we show that neural representations for control of movement are largely distinct following supervised or reinforcement learning. The latter most closely matches NHP recordings.
Previously, we show that neural representations for control of movement are largely distinct following supervised or reinforcement learning. The latter most closely matches NHP recordings.
Reposted by Jay Hennig
How does the brain find its way in realistic environments? 🧠 Using deep RL and neural data, we show that hippocampal-like networks support navigation, learning, and generalisation in partially observable environments—mirroring real animal behaviour. Now out:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroAI
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroAI
Hippocampus supports multi-task reinforcement learning under partial observability - Nature Communications
Neural mechanisms underlying reinforcement learning in naturalistic environments are not fully understood. Here authors show that reinforcement learning (RL) agents with hippocampal-like recurrence, u...
www.nature.com
November 3, 2025 at 10:20 AM
How does the brain find its way in realistic environments? 🧠 Using deep RL and neural data, we show that hippocampal-like networks support navigation, learning, and generalisation in partially observable environments—mirroring real animal behaviour. Now out:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroAI
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroAI
I'm partial to Siouxsie & The Banshees's "Halloween" 🎃
youtu.be/ksg2ESuEMhw?...
youtu.be/ksg2ESuEMhw?...
October 31, 2025 at 4:53 PM
I'm partial to Siouxsie & The Banshees's "Halloween" 🎃
youtu.be/ksg2ESuEMhw?...
youtu.be/ksg2ESuEMhw?...
Reposted by Jay Hennig
LLMs are trained to compress data by mapping sequences to high-dim representations!
How does the complexity of this mapping change across LLM training? How does it relate to the model’s capabilities? 🤔
Announcing our #NeurIPS2025 📄 that dives into this.
🧵below
#AIResearch #MachineLearning #LLM
How does the complexity of this mapping change across LLM training? How does it relate to the model’s capabilities? 🤔
Announcing our #NeurIPS2025 📄 that dives into this.
🧵below
#AIResearch #MachineLearning #LLM
October 31, 2025 at 4:19 PM
LLMs are trained to compress data by mapping sequences to high-dim representations!
How does the complexity of this mapping change across LLM training? How does it relate to the model’s capabilities? 🤔
Announcing our #NeurIPS2025 📄 that dives into this.
🧵below
#AIResearch #MachineLearning #LLM
How does the complexity of this mapping change across LLM training? How does it relate to the model’s capabilities? 🤔
Announcing our #NeurIPS2025 📄 that dives into this.
🧵below
#AIResearch #MachineLearning #LLM
Reposted by Jay Hennig
To be clear, have not been able to read the original study because the link does not work. HEre is a fun paper on fourier. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Phantom oscillations in principal component analysis | PNAS
Principal component analysis (PCA) is a dimensionality reduction method that is known
for being simple and easy to interpret. Principal components ...
www.pnas.org
October 31, 2025 at 1:14 PM
To be clear, have not been able to read the original study because the link does not work. HEre is a fun paper on fourier. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Reposted by Jay Hennig
uv makes installing and using Python *so* easy! It works on pretty much any computer and it's lightning fast. 🔭☄️ #astrocode
If you're still using conda, pyenv, or... basically any other tool, then I can *highly* recommend switching:
If you're still using conda, pyenv, or... basically any other tool, then I can *highly* recommend switching:
uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade - Blog - Dr. Emily L. Hunt
Released in 2024, uv is hands-down the best tool for managing Python installations and dependencies. Here's why.
emily.space
October 24, 2025 at 1:03 PM
uv makes installing and using Python *so* easy! It works on pretty much any computer and it's lightning fast. 🔭☄️ #astrocode
If you're still using conda, pyenv, or... basically any other tool, then I can *highly* recommend switching:
If you're still using conda, pyenv, or... basically any other tool, then I can *highly* recommend switching:
Reposted by Jay Hennig
French has it as masculine but the more important thing is that it’s pronounced like ”chat, j’ai pété” which means “cat, I farted.”
October 30, 2025 at 3:15 PM
French has it as masculine but the more important thing is that it’s pronounced like ”chat, j’ai pété” which means “cat, I farted.”
Reposted by Jay Hennig
I wrote an op-ed on the world-class STEM research ecosystem in the United States, and how this ecosystem is now under attack on multiple fronts by the current administration: newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-an-awar...
I’m an award-winning mathematician. Trump just cut my funding.
The “Mozart of Math” tried to stay out of politics. Then it came for his research.
newsletter.ofthebrave.org
August 18, 2025 at 3:45 PM
I wrote an op-ed on the world-class STEM research ecosystem in the United States, and how this ecosystem is now under attack on multiple fronts by the current administration: newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-an-awar...
Just led a journal club discussion of Mante & Sussillo, and decided that to understand most papers in systems computational neuroscience, you need to be willing to assume that vectors of neural firing rates are literally all you need to understand what the brain is doing
October 29, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Just led a journal club discussion of Mante & Sussillo, and decided that to understand most papers in systems computational neuroscience, you need to be willing to assume that vectors of neural firing rates are literally all you need to understand what the brain is doing
Reposted by Jay Hennig
Thrilled that our paper is out today in Nature!
www.nature.com/articles/s4...
www.nature.com/articles/s4...
Sensory expectations shape neural population dynamics in motor circuits
Nature - Experiments with human volunteers and macaques show that expectations produced by probabilistic cueing of future sensory inputs shape motor circuit dynamics in order to increase the...
www.nature.com
October 29, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Thrilled that our paper is out today in Nature!
www.nature.com/articles/s4...
www.nature.com/articles/s4...
Reposted by Jay Hennig
Yes!! A POMDP world model benchmark with controlled test environments. So excited to play with this
October 29, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Yes!! A POMDP world model benchmark with controlled test environments. So excited to play with this
Reposted by Jay Hennig
does everybody know about my favorite website, the embroidery tips page that forgot to close its <h3> tags
Embroidery Trouble Shooting Page
Embroidery Trouble Shooting Answers to all your questions about Embroidery problems
web.archive.org
October 25, 2024 at 3:39 PM
does everybody know about my favorite website, the embroidery tips page that forgot to close its <h3> tags
Reposted by Jay Hennig
Are working memory and timing two sides of the same coin? Does the duration of WM adapt to the temporal structure of the task? This collaborative project led by Conor Dorian shows that mice learn the WM delay, which in turn shapes the neural signatures of WM.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Hippocampal sequences represent working memory and implicit timing
Working memory (WM) and timing are considered distinct cognitive functions, yet the neural signatures underlying both can be similar. To address the h…
www.sciencedirect.com
October 22, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Are working memory and timing two sides of the same coin? Does the duration of WM adapt to the temporal structure of the task? This collaborative project led by Conor Dorian shows that mice learn the WM delay, which in turn shapes the neural signatures of WM.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Jay Hennig
Want to make publication-ready figures come straight from Python without having to do any manual editing? Are you fed up with axes labels being unreadable during your presentations? Follow this short tutorial including code examples! 👇🧵
October 16, 2025 at 8:26 AM
Want to make publication-ready figures come straight from Python without having to do any manual editing? Are you fed up with axes labels being unreadable during your presentations? Follow this short tutorial including code examples! 👇🧵
Reposted by Jay Hennig
great stuff! you can also put this in matplotlibrc file or mplstyle file, it's possible to have one for each project, then it's loaded automatically: matplotlib.org/stable/users...
Customizing Matplotlib with style sheets and rcParams — Matplotlib 3.10.7 documentation
matplotlib.org
October 16, 2025 at 8:56 AM
great stuff! you can also put this in matplotlibrc file or mplstyle file, it's possible to have one for each project, then it's loaded automatically: matplotlib.org/stable/users...
Reposted by Jay Hennig
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...
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
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...
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...
Averaged spike-rates across neurons
In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.
rm -rf ~/
rm -rf ~/
"The chancellor approved it"
October 12, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Averaged spike-rates across neurons
Reposted by Jay Hennig
Excellent analysis of the Trump compact for universities -- read it, recommend it, share it.
Among the big points: take away the law's predictability and fairness, and instead become entirely subjugated to arbitrary whims of the DOJ.
Dangerous and un-American.
balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...
Among the big points: take away the law's predictability and fairness, and instead become entirely subjugated to arbitrary whims of the DOJ.
Dangerous and un-American.
balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...
Balkinization: The Art of Replacing the Law with the Deal
A group blog on constitutional law, theory, and politics
balkin.blogspot.com
October 6, 2025 at 1:11 AM
Excellent analysis of the Trump compact for universities -- read it, recommend it, share it.
Among the big points: take away the law's predictability and fairness, and instead become entirely subjugated to arbitrary whims of the DOJ.
Dangerous and un-American.
balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...
Among the big points: take away the law's predictability and fairness, and instead become entirely subjugated to arbitrary whims of the DOJ.
Dangerous and un-American.
balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...
Reposted by Jay Hennig
Did you know that facial expressions reveal more than meets the eye? 🤯
Our new study shows that even a mouse's face 🐭 can reflect hidden neural computations🧠. Turns out, facial expressions are more than just emotions!
We're so excited to see this paper out @natneuro.nature.com 🎉
🔗: rdcu.be/eIQzO
Our new study shows that even a mouse's face 🐭 can reflect hidden neural computations🧠. Turns out, facial expressions are more than just emotions!
We're so excited to see this paper out @natneuro.nature.com 🎉
🔗: rdcu.be/eIQzO
Facial expressions in mice reveal latent cognitive variables and their neural correlates
Nature Neuroscience - The face reveals more than just emotion. Cazettes, Reato and colleagues show that subtle facial movements reveal hidden cognitive states, reflecting the brain’s ongoing...
rdcu.be
September 30, 2025 at 11:30 AM
Did you know that facial expressions reveal more than meets the eye? 🤯
Our new study shows that even a mouse's face 🐭 can reflect hidden neural computations🧠. Turns out, facial expressions are more than just emotions!
We're so excited to see this paper out @natneuro.nature.com 🎉
🔗: rdcu.be/eIQzO
Our new study shows that even a mouse's face 🐭 can reflect hidden neural computations🧠. Turns out, facial expressions are more than just emotions!
We're so excited to see this paper out @natneuro.nature.com 🎉
🔗: rdcu.be/eIQzO