My CIHR committee was already at an 11% funding line last cycle (and I don't think it's the lowest)

Yes but thankfully it's only a small cut in the current plan (which is kind of a win given how bad it could have gone). But certainly worse than a sustained increase, given the increasing applicant pool.

www.science.org/content/arti...

That being said, investment is investment, and it all could be a lot worse! Having a government acknowledging scientific excellence as a priority is a good signal.

Fully agree. The unfortunate thing is that this is paired with cuts to federal research budgets. Importing highly competitive "big fish" while shrinking the pot for grants is not a great combo for the broader ecosystem... If Canada really wants to capitalize they need to think short and long term

Thanks!

Thanks!

More info on our funded project is here: webapps.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/decisions/p/.... In many ways, this directly follows our 2020 paper: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... But we have much broader ambitions too and are building a flexible platform for NHP motor ephys. Should be a fun 5 years!

IMO Montreal is one of the best cities out there for neuro, and everyone in my lab will get to enjoy learning from and interacting with the NeuroAI folks at Mila. If modeling the computations behind multi-modal sensorimotor integration and adaptation is of interest to you, please reach out!

Could be a cell type difference (Gardner 2022 focused on grid cells) or a region difference? Methods difference? Lots of interesting possibilities!

Though I will say that some evidence suggests it's not going to always be 1:1 with environment. E.g. the 2022 Gardner ERC place cell paper we mention in the article has place cells mapping even square environments into a toroid shape. Though the Guo 2024 CA1 paper has environment-hspaed manifolds

There's a long and fun conversation to be had here 🙂. But I agree, the "many-to-few" nature of neurons to manifolds allows considerable drift in single neuron activity without changing the manifold. Important in next steps to find out when, and how, neural drift changes manifold-level properties!

Indeed, IMO behavior (and environment, etc) are inextricably linked to manifold properties. For this reason, comparative (e.g. for same behavior, are manifolds different in different regions?) and causal (e.g., move activity on the manifold and predict behavioral changes) experiments are essential.

Thanks for the kind words and really glad you enjoyed the article!

Thanks to @emilysingerneuro.bsky.social for another opportunity to work with The Transmitter (which is an awesome publication), and of course the many, many long conversations on manifolds with @juangallego.bsky.social that shaped these articles 🙂