Karim Habashy
@krhab.bsky.social
Computational neuroscientist, machine learning, foundations of intelligence
Maybe a not so smart take, but there are four types (or subtypes) of ON-OFF directionally selective retinal ganglion cell in mice, upward, downward, backward and forward (Sans and Mashland 2015).
Yet, why didn't nature use an efficient 2-cell binary code for these directions? Nature makes me 🤪.
Yet, why didn't nature use an efficient 2-cell binary code for these directions? Nature makes me 🤪.
September 24, 2025 at 7:55 AM
Maybe a not so smart take, but there are four types (or subtypes) of ON-OFF directionally selective retinal ganglion cell in mice, upward, downward, backward and forward (Sans and Mashland 2015).
Yet, why didn't nature use an efficient 2-cell binary code for these directions? Nature makes me 🤪.
Yet, why didn't nature use an efficient 2-cell binary code for these directions? Nature makes me 🤪.
How many independent verifications are ok for a result (experimental hypothesis) to be adopted into other work? When I read a new interesting paper, I am always excited and worried. Excited about the prospects of the results and their potential, worried about the certainty/confidence of its claims.
September 20, 2025 at 7:12 AM
How many independent verifications are ok for a result (experimental hypothesis) to be adopted into other work? When I read a new interesting paper, I am always excited and worried. Excited about the prospects of the results and their potential, worried about the certainty/confidence of its claims.
Reposted by Karim Habashy
Submissions (short!) due for SNUFA spiking neural networks conference in <2 weeks! 🤖🧠🧪
forms.cloud.microsoft/e/XkZLavhaJe
More info at snufa.net/2025/
Note that we normally get around 700 participants and recordings go on YouTube and get 100s-1000s views.
Please repost.
forms.cloud.microsoft/e/XkZLavhaJe
More info at snufa.net/2025/
Note that we normally get around 700 participants and recordings go on YouTube and get 100s-1000s views.
Please repost.
SNUFA 2025
Spiking Neural networks as Universal Function Approximators
snufa.net
September 16, 2025 at 9:33 AM
Submissions (short!) due for SNUFA spiking neural networks conference in <2 weeks! 🤖🧠🧪
forms.cloud.microsoft/e/XkZLavhaJe
More info at snufa.net/2025/
Note that we normally get around 700 participants and recordings go on YouTube and get 100s-1000s views.
Please repost.
forms.cloud.microsoft/e/XkZLavhaJe
More info at snufa.net/2025/
Note that we normally get around 700 participants and recordings go on YouTube and get 100s-1000s views.
Please repost.
Seems plausible to me.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L1J...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L1J...
5 Signs the AI Bubble is About to Burst
YouTube video by Sabine Hossenfelder
www.youtube.com
September 15, 2025 at 7:22 PM
Seems plausible to me.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L1J...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L1J...
Reposted by Karim Habashy
The following article is now in press at Psychological Review. Interested to hear what people think! "The successes and failures of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) highlight the importance of innate linguistic priors for human language acquisition".
osf.io/preprints/ps... via
osf.io/preprints/ps... via
OSF
osf.io
September 10, 2025 at 2:44 PM
The following article is now in press at Psychological Review. Interested to hear what people think! "The successes and failures of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) highlight the importance of innate linguistic priors for human language acquisition".
osf.io/preprints/ps... via
osf.io/preprints/ps... via
I am just thinking about the benefits of investing "too" much on new Data centers in the age where breakthroughs might be just around the corner. I mean, who knows, maybe a new architecture that is more AI friendly (with the appropriate model of course) can emerge in the near future.
September 10, 2025 at 7:33 PM
I am just thinking about the benefits of investing "too" much on new Data centers in the age where breakthroughs might be just around the corner. I mean, who knows, maybe a new architecture that is more AI friendly (with the appropriate model of course) can emerge in the near future.
Is brain-wide distributed code at odds with temporal coding? 🤔 I don't know, this thought has been buzzing my brain lately.
September 9, 2025 at 8:06 AM
Is brain-wide distributed code at odds with temporal coding? 🤔 I don't know, this thought has been buzzing my brain lately.
If symbolic reasoning is the peak of the human cognitive evolution, then an AGI should not only reach this level, but evolve beyond and push through to the next level in the cognitive hierarchy.
September 8, 2025 at 12:32 PM
If symbolic reasoning is the peak of the human cognitive evolution, then an AGI should not only reach this level, but evolve beyond and push through to the next level in the cognitive hierarchy.
Reposted by Karim Habashy
Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it:
September 6, 2025 at 11:09 PM
Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it:
Was my pleasure working on this project, a great avenue to discuss interesting ideas and make new connections.
Is anarchist science possible? As an experiment, we got together a large group of computational neuroscientists from around the world to work on a single project without top down direction. Read on to find out what happened. 🤖🧠🧪
September 4, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Was my pleasure working on this project, a great avenue to discuss interesting ideas and make new connections.
I find the following sentence interesting:
" Instead, the work of Hubel and Wiesel and the Nobel committee's recognition directed brain research along an overly narrow path for over 50 years."
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
" Instead, the work of Hubel and Wiesel and the Nobel committee's recognition directed brain research along an overly narrow path for over 50 years."
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
August 29, 2025 at 6:35 PM
I find the following sentence interesting:
" Instead, the work of Hubel and Wiesel and the Nobel committee's recognition directed brain research along an overly narrow path for over 50 years."
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
" Instead, the work of Hubel and Wiesel and the Nobel committee's recognition directed brain research along an overly narrow path for over 50 years."
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
I think a crucial project to undertake is to visually layout the human cortex in a friendly way (like a map with connections) at different levels of spatiotemporal details, while highlighting and summarizing relevant theories and hypotheses for the zoomed-on area. This is one of my dream projects.
August 23, 2025 at 11:34 AM
I think a crucial project to undertake is to visually layout the human cortex in a friendly way (like a map with connections) at different levels of spatiotemporal details, while highlighting and summarizing relevant theories and hypotheses for the zoomed-on area. This is one of my dream projects.
It is thought that V1 complex cells are phase invariant because they integrate the activity of many simple cells. This is such a simple and easy mechanism to comprehend yet after 1000s of models and papers the visual cortex is still an enigma. I find this amusing.
August 22, 2025 at 5:05 PM
It is thought that V1 complex cells are phase invariant because they integrate the activity of many simple cells. This is such a simple and easy mechanism to comprehend yet after 1000s of models and papers the visual cortex is still an enigma. I find this amusing.
Hot take of the year: I think for humanity to move forward, we need to amend our egoistic evolutionary heritage with a splash of altruistism. Maybe egoism is one of the ingredients for fast tracking intelligence, but maybe also, it is its own ceiling.
August 14, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Hot take of the year: I think for humanity to move forward, we need to amend our egoistic evolutionary heritage with a splash of altruistism. Maybe egoism is one of the ingredients for fast tracking intelligence, but maybe also, it is its own ceiling.
Why is it "What and Where" not "What or Where"? 🤔
August 13, 2025 at 7:36 AM
Why is it "What and Where" not "What or Where"? 🤔
A quote from the paper by Spillmann et. al. 2015:
"Future research on extraclassical RF properties will have to include studies on processes of perceptual learning and memory. The temporal firing characteristics of neurons are critical in these processes (citations)....
"Future research on extraclassical RF properties will have to include studies on processes of perceptual learning and memory. The temporal firing characteristics of neurons are critical in these processes (citations)....
August 12, 2025 at 11:23 AM
A quote from the paper by Spillmann et. al. 2015:
"Future research on extraclassical RF properties will have to include studies on processes of perceptual learning and memory. The temporal firing characteristics of neurons are critical in these processes (citations)....
"Future research on extraclassical RF properties will have to include studies on processes of perceptual learning and memory. The temporal firing characteristics of neurons are critical in these processes (citations)....
A great paper that elaborates the interdependence between different types of weight classes and the task at hand. It also highlights the functional utility of each weight class.
How does the structure of a neural circuit shape its function?
@neuralreckoning.bsky.social & I explore this in our new preprint:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
🤖🧠🧪
🧵1/9
@neuralreckoning.bsky.social & I explore this in our new preprint:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
🤖🧠🧪
🧵1/9
August 1, 2025 at 9:55 AM
A great paper that elaborates the interdependence between different types of weight classes and the task at hand. It also highlights the functional utility of each weight class.
Is there a proof that the visual cortex has equivariance transformations? It might be that equivariance of CNNs is an artificial property that is not available in the visual cortex? Maybe, equivariance is the property of kernels/filters stacked vertically and not arranged horizontally as in the VC?
July 15, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Is there a proof that the visual cortex has equivariance transformations? It might be that equivariance of CNNs is an artificial property that is not available in the visual cortex? Maybe, equivariance is the property of kernels/filters stacked vertically and not arranged horizontally as in the VC?
Reposted by Karim Habashy
I wrote a thing for @thetransmitter.bsky.social. The attack on scientific infrastructure happening in the US shows that relying on any one country is not a good option for science. We need to start supporting and building international, decentralised infrastructure for science.
Scientific data and independence are at risk: We need to work with community-driven services and university libraries to create new multi-country organizations that are resilient to political interference.
By @neuralreckoning.bsky.social
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/policy/scien...
By @neuralreckoning.bsky.social
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/policy/scien...
Science must step away from nationally managed infrastructure
Scientific data and independence are at risk. We need to work with community-driven services and university libraries to create new multi-country organizations that are resilient to political…
www.thetransmitter.org
February 20, 2025 at 5:21 PM
I wrote a thing for @thetransmitter.bsky.social. The attack on scientific infrastructure happening in the US shows that relying on any one country is not a good option for science. We need to start supporting and building international, decentralised infrastructure for science.
"Redundancy is the part of our sensory experience that distinguishes it from noise" H.B. Barlow, from "Unsupervised learning 1989"
February 19, 2025 at 7:00 PM
"Redundancy is the part of our sensory experience that distinguishes it from noise" H.B. Barlow, from "Unsupervised learning 1989"
True 🤣.
Source: Sarcasm on Facebook
Source: Sarcasm on Facebook
February 15, 2025 at 2:26 PM
True 🤣.
Source: Sarcasm on Facebook
Source: Sarcasm on Facebook
Did intelligence arise from observing iid data or from data that is correlated in space & time? 🤔
February 13, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Did intelligence arise from observing iid data or from data that is correlated in space & time? 🤔
One cannot simply retire from passion!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lwE...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lwE...
MIYAZAKI
YouTube video by Chrispy Animations
www.youtube.com
February 11, 2025 at 9:23 AM
One cannot simply retire from passion!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lwE...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lwE...
If only life was like movies. I just wanted to share this ending (spoiler warning, watch at your own risk!):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkxX...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkxX...
The Shawshank Redemption 1994 - ending scene
YouTube video by BestEverMovieClips
www.youtube.com
February 9, 2025 at 8:40 PM
If only life was like movies. I just wanted to share this ending (spoiler warning, watch at your own risk!):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkxX...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkxX...
Science rant: since I can't find a solid account (maybe I am not looking hard enough) for a curvature receptive field that builds upon the V1 simple cells (edge and spatial freq. etc..), and locally continuous (nearby curvatures are mapped to nearby neurons). I asked Chatgpt. I like the art.
February 8, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Science rant: since I can't find a solid account (maybe I am not looking hard enough) for a curvature receptive field that builds upon the V1 simple cells (edge and spatial freq. etc..), and locally continuous (nearby curvatures are mapped to nearby neurons). I asked Chatgpt. I like the art.