Timothy O'Leary
@timothyoleary.bsky.social
Professor of Engineering and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge
Reposted by Timothy O'Leary
Would love to hear expert views on this paper. It appears to show that the operationalization of brain activity the field has relied on for 3 decades—the BOLD response—is not actually a sensible measure of brain activity.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
BOLD signal changes can oppose oxygen metabolism across the human cortex - Nature Neuroscience
Using quantitative brain imaging, the authors show opposite fMRI BOLD signal to metabolic activity due to variable oxygen extraction across the human cortex. This questions the canonical interpretatio...
www.nature.com
January 5, 2026 at 11:55 AM
Would love to hear expert views on this paper. It appears to show that the operationalization of brain activity the field has relied on for 3 decades—the BOLD response—is not actually a sensible measure of brain activity.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Timothy O'Leary
What is the computational role of dendritic excitations? Byung Hun Lee and team mapped voltage dynamics throughout the dendritic trees of CA1 pyramidal neurons in mice navigating in virtual reality. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
January 4, 2026 at 6:17 AM
What is the computational role of dendritic excitations? Byung Hun Lee and team mapped voltage dynamics throughout the dendritic trees of CA1 pyramidal neurons in mice navigating in virtual reality. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
January 2, 2026 at 4:10 PM
Reposted by Timothy O'Leary
I don't always get pretty, isolated, AND transfected primary neurons in culture, but when I do I take advantage.... Rat hippocampal neuron overexpressing ThymosinB4-mScarlet and imaged for 16hr on a @zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social LSM880 with Airyscan. #FluorescenceFriday #Microscopy
December 19, 2025 at 2:01 PM
I don't always get pretty, isolated, AND transfected primary neurons in culture, but when I do I take advantage.... Rat hippocampal neuron overexpressing ThymosinB4-mScarlet and imaged for 16hr on a @zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social LSM880 with Airyscan. #FluorescenceFriday #Microscopy
I had a PhD application with an entirely hallucinated reference section. When I asked the kid why I couldn't find the journals let alone the references, he doubled down and said they were placeholders for the actual papers and the rest was definitely his work. We can't keep on top of this.
Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things
December 16, 2025 at 10:43 AM
I had a PhD application with an entirely hallucinated reference section. When I asked the kid why I couldn't find the journals let alone the references, he doubled down and said they were placeholders for the actual papers and the rest was definitely his work. We can't keep on top of this.
Reposted by Timothy O'Leary
When your PI presents your work
December 15, 2025 at 12:00 PM
When your PI presents your work
Researchers extract latent representation of humanity's future from latest AI model
December 12, 2025 at 9:59 PM
Researchers extract latent representation of humanity's future from latest AI model
"a control system"
The "what else" argument is really something quite bizarre. The brain is a computer, because what else, a magic box?
Like a cat must be a horse, because what else, an elephant?
Like a cat must be a horse, because what else, an elephant?
December 11, 2025 at 12:35 PM
"a control system"
Meanwhile, applicants explore use of AI in writing proposals and... fuck it, everything.
UKRI exploring use of AI in grant review - this will prompt debate but interested to know if people think it’d encourage novelty or the opposite? www.chemistryworld.com/news/ukri-op...
UKRI opens up grant proposal data to explore using AI to smooth peer review
Surging applications has led the UK's main funder to look at ways to reduce the burden on reviewers
www.chemistryworld.com
December 4, 2025 at 9:56 PM
Meanwhile, applicants explore use of AI in writing proposals and... fuck it, everything.
With the US demonstrating its role as the paragon of democracy, unsullied by bribery and manipulation by wealthy individuals, the UK is desperate to follow.
giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Reform UK receives record £9mn donation from Christopher Harborne
giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Reform UK receives record £9mn donation from Christopher Harborne
Reform UK receives record £9mn donation from Christopher Harborne
Nigel Farage’s party attracts far more funding than Labour and the Conservatives
giftarticle.ft.com
December 4, 2025 at 9:30 PM
With the US demonstrating its role as the paragon of democracy, unsullied by bribery and manipulation by wealthy individuals, the UK is desperate to follow.
giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Reform UK receives record £9mn donation from Christopher Harborne
giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Reform UK receives record £9mn donation from Christopher Harborne
Reposted by Timothy O'Leary
Artificial intelligence promises rapid and polite feedback on papers — but we must first review the reviewer. This stand first says it all…
A timely World View Colin in our pages by Giorgio Gilestro
🧪 #academicSky
@nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
A timely World View Colin in our pages by Giorgio Gilestro
🧪 #academicSky
@nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
AI reviewers are here — we are not ready
Artificial intelligence promises rapid and polite feedback on papers — but we must first review the reviewer.
www.nature.com
December 3, 2025 at 2:09 PM
Artificial intelligence promises rapid and polite feedback on papers — but we must first review the reviewer. This stand first says it all…
A timely World View Colin in our pages by Giorgio Gilestro
🧪 #academicSky
@nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
A timely World View Colin in our pages by Giorgio Gilestro
🧪 #academicSky
@nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
This kind of approach is crucial for a theory of intelligence:
1/ Why does RL struggle with social dilemmas? How can we ensure that AI learns to cooperate rather than compete?
Introducing our new framework: MUPI (Embedded Universal Predictive Intelligence) which provides a theoretical basis for new cooperative solutions in RL.
Preprint🧵👇
(Paper link below.)
Introducing our new framework: MUPI (Embedded Universal Predictive Intelligence) which provides a theoretical basis for new cooperative solutions in RL.
Preprint🧵👇
(Paper link below.)
December 3, 2025 at 8:21 PM
This kind of approach is crucial for a theory of intelligence:
We are opening a FACULTY POSITION (tenure track, permanent) in the University of Cambridge at the interface of control and biology, interpreted broadly. Theorists and wet lab quantitative biologists with backgrounds in control, EE, applied math, ... apply by Jan 28!
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/univers...
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/univers...
University Assistant/Associate Professor in Control Theory and Systems Biology
Applications are invited for a University Assistant/Associate Professorship in the broad area of Control Theory and Systems Biology. The successful candidate will join the Control Group
www.cam.ac.uk
December 3, 2025 at 12:19 PM
We are opening a FACULTY POSITION (tenure track, permanent) in the University of Cambridge at the interface of control and biology, interpreted broadly. Theorists and wet lab quantitative biologists with backgrounds in control, EE, applied math, ... apply by Jan 28!
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/univers...
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/univers...
Reposted by Timothy O'Leary
The best scientific papers are provocations, not results you can rely on. Discuss!
What I mean is that they should try to force progress by making an outrageous statement that the established field wants to be wrong, but do it so well that proving it wrong is a real challenge.
What I mean is that they should try to force progress by making an outrageous statement that the established field wants to be wrong, but do it so well that proving it wrong is a real challenge.
November 30, 2025 at 12:59 AM
The best scientific papers are provocations, not results you can rely on. Discuss!
What I mean is that they should try to force progress by making an outrageous statement that the established field wants to be wrong, but do it so well that proving it wrong is a real challenge.
What I mean is that they should try to force progress by making an outrageous statement that the established field wants to be wrong, but do it so well that proving it wrong is a real challenge.
Hmm.... ya think?
I'm worried that there are some things slipping through (or soon to) as: LLM-generated manuscript, goes to editor using LLM to summarize, goes to reviewers using LLM to review, and not a single bit of the whole process is done by a human, is actual science, or is useful at all.
November 28, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Hmm.... ya think?
Reposted by Timothy O'Leary
Springer-Nature statement
“Whilst the details of peer review are confidential, we can confirm that the article underwent two rounds of review from two independent peer reviewers, supporting an accept decision.”
How am I now expected to believe that two people looked at the paper twice and DGAF?
“Whilst the details of peer review are confidential, we can confirm that the article underwent two rounds of review from two independent peer reviewers, supporting an accept decision.”
How am I now expected to believe that two people looked at the paper twice and DGAF?
Riding the Autism Bicycle to Retraction Town
Does anyone *really* know their Factor Fexcectorn?
nobreakthroughs.substack.com
November 28, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Springer-Nature statement
“Whilst the details of peer review are confidential, we can confirm that the article underwent two rounds of review from two independent peer reviewers, supporting an accept decision.”
How am I now expected to believe that two people looked at the paper twice and DGAF?
“Whilst the details of peer review are confidential, we can confirm that the article underwent two rounds of review from two independent peer reviewers, supporting an accept decision.”
How am I now expected to believe that two people looked at the paper twice and DGAF?
Farming failed to take off in Europe due to a shortage of heads it seems.
In addition to being a fascinating (if horrific) insight into a mostly-unknown period of European prehistory, this includes a BANGER of a quote: "I can see why all these people without heads wouldn’t be good for a community, and might be a cause for abandonment."
www.science.org/content/arti...
www.science.org/content/arti...
Headless bodies hint at why Europe’s first farmers vanished
Wave of mass brutality accompanied the collapse of the first pan-European culture
www.science.org
November 25, 2025 at 11:07 PM
Farming failed to take off in Europe due to a shortage of heads it seems.
Reposted by Timothy O'Leary
In addition to being a fascinating (if horrific) insight into a mostly-unknown period of European prehistory, this includes a BANGER of a quote: "I can see why all these people without heads wouldn’t be good for a community, and might be a cause for abandonment."
www.science.org/content/arti...
www.science.org/content/arti...
Headless bodies hint at why Europe’s first farmers vanished
Wave of mass brutality accompanied the collapse of the first pan-European culture
www.science.org
November 25, 2025 at 4:21 PM
In addition to being a fascinating (if horrific) insight into a mostly-unknown period of European prehistory, this includes a BANGER of a quote: "I can see why all these people without heads wouldn’t be good for a community, and might be a cause for abandonment."
www.science.org/content/arti...
www.science.org/content/arti...
Reposted by Timothy O'Leary
Decades after it was raised as an issue in neurophysiology it is nice to see this topic confronted in the ML/neural net community. I just wish the intellectual connections were stronger and more explicit, because we can't sensibly separate ideas from neuro with those in AI.
📍Excited to share that our paper was selected as a Spotlight at #NeurIPS2025!
arxiv.org/pdf/2410.03972
It started from a question I kept running into:
When do RNNs trained on the same task converge/diverge in their solutions?
🧵⬇️
arxiv.org/pdf/2410.03972
It started from a question I kept running into:
When do RNNs trained on the same task converge/diverge in their solutions?
🧵⬇️
November 24, 2025 at 5:10 PM
Decades after it was raised as an issue in neurophysiology it is nice to see this topic confronted in the ML/neural net community. I just wish the intellectual connections were stronger and more explicit, because we can't sensibly separate ideas from neuro with those in AI.
my little take on whole-brain neurophysiology and what it tells us about global coordination of neural activity on behavioural timescales
(I steered clear of tasteless analogies for this one...)
authors.elsevier.com/a/1m7H5_LsQS...
(I steered clear of tasteless analogies for this one...)
authors.elsevier.com/a/1m7H5_LsQS...
authors.elsevier.com
November 19, 2025 at 2:05 PM
my little take on whole-brain neurophysiology and what it tells us about global coordination of neural activity on behavioural timescales
(I steered clear of tasteless analogies for this one...)
authors.elsevier.com/a/1m7H5_LsQS...
(I steered clear of tasteless analogies for this one...)
authors.elsevier.com/a/1m7H5_LsQS...
Reposted by Timothy O'Leary
My little book on Schrödinger's famous classic 'What Is Life?' is out! Offering the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of the book's origins, reception, impact, and legacy, it uncovers Schrödinger's motivations in writing it, and shows how it has shaped our current understanding of the cell
<i>What Is Life?</i> Revisited
Cambridge Core - Philosophy: General Interest - <i>What Is Life?</i> Revisited
www.cambridge.org
October 10, 2025 at 1:52 PM
My little book on Schrödinger's famous classic 'What Is Life?' is out! Offering the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of the book's origins, reception, impact, and legacy, it uncovers Schrödinger's motivations in writing it, and shows how it has shaped our current understanding of the cell
Anyone who has been actively recruiting STEM graduates over the last decade feels this plot in their bones.
October 31, 2025 at 3:05 PM
Anyone who has been actively recruiting STEM graduates over the last decade feels this plot in their bones.
Reposted by Timothy O'Leary
After 13 years in the US, I’ve made the difficult decision to leave. Having packed up everything and rethought about priorities, rather painstakingly, while I’m sad to leave the life I’ve made here, I’m also relieved that I won’t have to plan my life around immigration policies anymore.
October 31, 2025 at 4:08 AM
After 13 years in the US, I’ve made the difficult decision to leave. Having packed up everything and rethought about priorities, rather painstakingly, while I’m sad to leave the life I’ve made here, I’m also relieved that I won’t have to plan my life around immigration policies anymore.