Borjan (Boki) Milinković
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neuromorphicboki.bsky.social
Borjan (Boki) Milinković
@neuromorphicboki.bsky.social
Mathematical Neuroscientist. Biologically Inclined.

Postdoctoral Researcher @ NeuroPsi (CNRS, Paris-Saclay).

Modelling psychedelic- and stimulation-induced shifts in consciousness.
Theorising about computation, causation, information, and emergence.
Pinned
📜🪇[PUBLISHED]: NEW PREPRINT!🪇📜

I am incredibly excited to announce that we have published our paper on how "Dynamical independence reveals anaesthetic specific fragmentation of emergent structure in neural dynamics"
w@thomasandrillon.bsky.social @anilseth.bsky.social Barnett, Carter

Strap in!
1/n
Dynamical independence reveals anaesthetic specific fragmentation of emergent structure in neural dynamics
Conscious experience depends on the coordinated activity of neural processes that span multiple scales--from synapses to whole-brain dynamics. A recently introduced measure, dynamical independence, id...
www.biorxiv.org
Reposted by Borjan (Boki) Milinković
Our new preprint on the FOODEEG open dataset is out! EEG recordings and behavioural responses on food cognition tasks for 117 participants will be made publicly available 🧠 @danfeuerriegel.bsky.social @tgro.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
FOODEEG: An open dataset of human electroencephalographic and behavioural responses to food images
Investigating the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying food choices has the potential to advance our understanding of eating behaviour and inform health-targeted interventions and policy. Large, publi...
www.biorxiv.org
November 10, 2025 at 11:34 PM
Reposted by Borjan (Boki) Milinković
Job Search
careers.pageuppeople.com
November 4, 2025 at 12:08 AM
Reposted by Borjan (Boki) Milinković
🚨New spotlight paper at Neurips 2025🚨

We show that in sign-diverse networks, inherent non-gradient “curl” terms arise, and can, depending on network architecture, destabilize gradient-descent solutions or paradoxically accelerate learning beyond pure gradient flow.

🧵⬇️

www.arxiv.org/abs/2510.02765
Curl Descent: Non-Gradient Learning Dynamics with Sign-Diverse Plasticity
Gradient-based algorithms are a cornerstone of artificial neural network training, yet it remains unclear whether biological neural networks use similar gradient-based strategies during learning. Expe...
www.arxiv.org
October 10, 2025 at 5:53 PM
Reposted by Borjan (Boki) Milinković
A multiple sclerosis patient in the UK was the first to receive CAR T cell therapy, invented by UCL researchers, in a clinical trial testing whether this personalised treatment can slow or even halt the progression of the disease. @uclqsion.bsky.social
www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/oc...
October 28, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by Borjan (Boki) Milinković
The final paper of my PhD is now out as a preprint. This is a follow-up piece in series of two companion papers modelling awareness and suppression in a new variant of continuous flash suppression.

arxiv.org/abs/2510.17154

🧵 1/3
A Minimal Quantitative Model of Perceptual Suppression and Breakthrough in Visual Rivalry
When conflicting images are presented to either eye, binocular fusion is disrupted. Rather than experiencing a blend of both percepts, often only one eye's image is experienced, whilst the other is su...
arxiv.org
October 21, 2025 at 6:10 AM
Reposted by Borjan (Boki) Milinković
It is an enormous pleasure—and a dream, really—to share that the University of Bamberg has approved an initiative dedicated to mathematical approaches in #ConSci. The initiative is called Bamberg Mathematical Consciousness Science Initiative, or BAMΞ for short.

bamxi.org #BAMΞ @uni-bamberg.de
October 17, 2025 at 12:34 PM
Will academia remain a viable option for many of us?

I still hope so.

With love for this game, I hope science promises to still be a field we can participate it.

In this world filled with doom-noise, lets aspire for optimistic mindsets.
Is academic research becoming too competitive? Nature examines the data
Applications for European research grants increased in 2025. Scientists say they’re feeling the competition.
www.nature.com
October 17, 2025 at 2:58 PM
“A musician finding his ear become every day more delicate, and correcting himself by reflection and attention, proceeds with the same act of the mind, even when the subject fails him, and entertains a notion of a compleat tierce or octave..”

Hume, 1739, presaging predictive processing
October 10, 2025 at 10:28 AM
Reposted by Borjan (Boki) Milinković
Thrilled to share our new study: “Distilling the neurophenomenological signatures of pure awareness during Transcendental Meditation”, combining subjective reports with large-scale screening of neural features to investigate pure awareness. Thread below! 👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org
September 30, 2025 at 9:09 AM
The eternally flagrant optimist in me would like to believe that this work will have far-reaching impact.
September 25, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Reposted by Borjan (Boki) Milinković
🚨 How do collective behaviours (high-order interdependencies) *emerge*❓

Can systems with low-order interactions do it?
What do these minimal synergistic systems look like?

In arxiv.org/abs/2505.246... we show when and how synergies emerge when no high-order mechanisms are involved.

Short 🧵: 1/N
Synergistic Motifs in Gaussian Systems
High-order interdependencies are central features of complex systems, yet a mechanistic explanation for their emergence remains elusive. Currently, it is unknown under what conditions high-order inter...
arxiv.org
September 18, 2025 at 12:12 PM
Reposted by Borjan (Boki) Milinković
🚨 New preprint 🚨
"Immersive NREM dreaming preserves subjective sleep depth against declining sleep pressure." We analyzed 1,024 awakenings collected across 196 nights with high-density EEG (256 ch.) to explore the relationship between dreaming and subjective sleep depth.

doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Immersive NREM dreaming preserves subjective sleep depth against declining sleep pressure
Perceived sleep depth is a key determinant of subjective sleep quality, traditionally thought to reflect unconsciousness and reduced cortical activation. Here, we combined high-density EEG with a seri...
doi.org
September 10, 2025 at 7:54 AM
Throwing this one into the virtual void in the hope there are a few hapless souls interested:

Would anyone like to participate in an #Information #Geometry reading/journal/study club? Preferably in person, if you're in Paris.

But, would consider doing an online one *for sure*.
September 11, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Brighton feels as good as I remember it.
September 10, 2025 at 8:06 AM
Reposted by Borjan (Boki) Milinković
🧠 New preprint! 🧠

As part of a forthcoming book on consciousness, we wrote a chapter on:

Spontaneous thoughts and experiences across wakefulness and sleep
osf.io/preprints/ps...

with @parboulakis.bsky.social @ademertzi.bsky.social and @jdsitt.bsky.social

A brief 🧵!
September 4, 2025 at 3:18 PM
This really does sound amazing. I'll be looking into this.

Also, I absolutely love the colour pallette. :-)

Congratulations!
This looks pretty cool: ultrasound can now see through the skull! 🧠🔊

The skull has long been a barrier to ultrasound. This reprint shows how to make it quickly transparent → enabling full-depth, high-res fUSI in mice (& humans! 🤯🤯)
Huge congrats to the authors!!!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
September 3, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Reposted by Borjan (Boki) Milinković
The first major output of the @templetonworld.bsky.social @arc-intrepid.bsky.social adversarial collaboration testing IIT & predictive processing theories of consciousness is out now

arxiv.org/abs/2509.00555
Integrated information and predictive processing theories of consciousness: An adversarial collaborative review
As neuroscientific theories of consciousness continue to proliferate, the need to assess their similarities and differences -- as well as their predictive and explanatory power -- becomes ever more pr...
arxiv.org
September 3, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Reposted by Borjan (Boki) Milinković
📜 ¡New preprint! 📜

𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐃𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬
osf.io/preprints/ps...
🧪🧠

With amazing alumni from @mesec-community.bsky.social and including:
@zefanzheng.bsky.social
@robertchisciure.bsky.social
@jaanaru.bsky.social
@bechir-jarraya.bsky.social
OSF
osf.io
September 3, 2025 at 7:33 AM
Reposted by Borjan (Boki) Milinković
Thank you so much for having me!! I always have a blast chatting with @bethfisher.bsky.social and this time was no different! 💕 Also I loved your reflections in the end and how both of you have change your mind perhaps a bit through sharing your experiences with each other. So cool and precious!
New episode!! Dr. Anikó Kusztor joins us this week to discuss the results of dissociation, and how they vary from person to person. Link in 🧵
September 3, 2025 at 1:58 AM
The rise of the machines or the age of digital-infantilism?

I tried a thing..

Here I write on the current digital-situation we find ourselves in. With an optimistic view on our future, with wider-reaching - and hopefully biologically-centred - aspirations.

It's fun, general, and personal writing
The rise of the machines or the age of digital-infantilism?
Will technology make us organismic zombies, or is it all, just techno-noise?
open.substack.com
August 22, 2025 at 9:15 PM
If #emergence is your thing, and, even if it isn't, here is a great annual workshop -- now on its third iteration(!) -- where you will get to hear some great presenters, of which, I am the least interesting.

Really looking forward to it!!
@sussexcogs.bsky.social
Third edition of the emergence workshop is almost here!

You can register using the QR code on the poster

Any questions, you can message me here or send an email!
August 19, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Today, Eric Schmidt and Selina Xu write in the @nytimes.com on the necessity for a deflation of idolising #AGI. Great piece.
Opinion | Silicon Valley Needs to Stop Obsessing Over Superhuman A.I.
www.nytimes.com
August 19, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Reposted by Borjan (Boki) Milinković
Interested in Network hubs, cortical hierarchies, and gradients? Ever wonder where they come from? Check our latest review, where we cover different approaches to mapping hubs, models for their evolution, and mechanisms for how they develop:

osf.io/preprints/os...
August 17, 2025 at 4:27 AM
Great article by @markdhumphries.bsky.social here. Humphries’ work had a significant impact on my thinking. This is precisely what we attempt to do in our recent preprint, and in previous published neural modelling work.

I’m sympathetic to the focus on dynamics in coarse graining.
August 12, 2025 at 4:07 PM
The post Rick Bretzel reposts is one I am enamoured by as I currently read the paper myself.

I completely agree with Rick that slow, and thoughtful science is the way forward. Not everything, everywhere, all at once.

It reminds me that in a world levelled by noise, the quiet resounds furthest
I've been thinking a lot about the preprint in terms of my own career. I grew up academically in computational labs. My papers were abstract early on and they only got more abstract as I progressed. The model was: find a new exciting mathematical tool. Apply it to brain imaging data. Write it up. 1/
I still get chills

Meet Mike
*30+ years severe depression
*first hospitalized @ 13y
*20 meds
*3 rounds of ECT
*2 near-fatal suicide attempts

Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE

see videos, read paper, follow thread
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
August 11, 2025 at 11:25 PM