Bill Podlaski
billpod.bsky.social
Bill Podlaski
@billpod.bsky.social
Comp neuro @ Champalimaud
I’m happy to share some recent work out in PLOS Computational Biology with @guille-martin.bsky.social and Christian Machens at @champalimaudr.bsky.social . We use neural coding and population geometry to study different perspectives on hippocampal remapping.

journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
Three types of remapping with linear decoders: A population-geometric perspective
Author summary Place cells of the hippocampus form unique activity patterns in different environments, a process called remapping. However, it is not clear what the relationship is between changes in ...
journals.plos.org
December 9, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
Are manifolds real?
Are latent circuits real?
Tatiana @engeltatiana.bsky.social uses one, infers the other, and says yes to both.

Also, how timescales are different and the same across the entire brain...

braininspired.co/podcast/226/
December 4, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
Finally got the job ad—looking for 2 PhD students to start spring next year:

www.gao-unit.com/join-us/

If comp neuro, ML, and AI4Neuro is your thing, or you just nerd out over brain recordings, apply!

I'm at neurips. DM me here / on the conference app or email if you want to meet 🏖️🌮
December 3, 2025 at 9:37 AM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
🧠 Applications for the International Neuroscience Doctoral Programme (INDP) @champalimaudf.bsky.social open until 31 January 2026.
☀️ Join our vibrant and international research community in sunny Lisbon!
🔗 fchampalimaud.org/champalimaud...
December 3, 2025 at 6:33 PM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
Call is out for Champalimaud International Neuroscience Doctoral Programme 2026! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com
December 2, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
How I contributed to rejecting one of my favorite papers of all times, Yes, I teach it to students daily, and refer to it in lots of papers. Sorry. open.substack.com/pub/kording/...
How I contributed to rejecting one of my favorite papers of all time
I believe we should talk about the mistakes we make.
open.substack.com
December 2, 2025 at 1:27 AM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
1/6 New preprint 🚀 How does the cortex learn to represent things and how they move without reconstructing sensory stimuli? We developed a circuit-centric recurrent predictive learning (RPL) model based on JEPAs.
🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Led by @atenagm.bsky.social @mshalvagal.bsky.social
November 27, 2025 at 8:24 AM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
The hippocampus is not a library, it is a simulation engine.

HPC is known for storing maps of the environment but not so known for generating planned trajectories.

This paper proposes that recurrence in CA3 is crucial for planning.

A🧵with my toy model and notes:

#neuroskyence #compneuro #NeuroAI
November 28, 2025 at 3:02 AM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
Interested in the neurobiological basis of social behaviour and its dysfunction? Join the Ferreira and @wolfhuette.bsky.social groups at Northumbria University for a fully funded PhD opportunity studying group behaviour in flies. Further details are available here: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Neuronal circuit-level action of genes underlying social behaviour dysfunction in Drosophila melanogaster (Ref: RDF26/SE/GNS/FERREIRA) at Northumbria University on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Neuronal circuit-level action of genes underlying social behaviour dysfunction in Drosophila melanogaster (Ref: RDF26/SE/GNS/FERREIRA) at Northumbria University, listed on FindAPhD.com
www.findaphd.com
November 22, 2025 at 9:56 AM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
Reminder if you missed #SNUFA spiking neural network and neuromorphic workshop earlier this month, all our talks were recorded and are now available to watch. 🤖🧠🧪

www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
SNUFA 2025 Workshop - YouTube
Spiking neural networks as universal function approximators (SNUFA) online workshop 2025. For more see http://snufa.net/2025/
www.youtube.com
November 20, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
@braininspired.bsky.social talks with Henk de Regt about what it means for both humans and artificial-intelligence agents to “understand,” and how to assess this understanding.

www.thetransmitter.org/brain-inspir...

#neuroskyence
Does AI understand what it produces? Henk de Regt explores how we might assess understanding in machines and humans
Building on his philosophy of how scientists understand what they work on, de Regt is extending his approach to test understanding in machines.
www.thetransmitter.org
November 19, 2025 at 3:04 PM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
Psst - neuromorphic folks. Did you know that you can solve the SHD dataset with 90% accuracy using only 22 kb of parameter memory by quantising weights and delays? Check out our preprint with @pengfei-sun.bsky.social and @danakarca.bsky.social, or read the TLDR below. 👇🤖🧠🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2510.27434
Exploiting heterogeneous delays for efficient computation in low-bit neural networks
Neural networks rely on learning synaptic weights. However, this overlooks other neural parameters that can also be learned and may be utilized by the brain. One such parameter is the delay: the brain...
arxiv.org
November 13, 2025 at 5:40 PM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
I am super happy to share that our project on training biophysical models with Jaxley is now published in Nature Methods: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Jaxley: differentiable simulation enables large-scale training of detailed biophysical models of neural dynamics - Nature Methods
Jaxley is a versatile platform for biophysical modeling in neuroscience. It allows efficiently simulating large-scale biophysical models on CPUs, GPUs and TPUs. Model parameters can be optimized with ...
www.nature.com
November 13, 2025 at 12:38 PM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
My prediction is that LLM peer review will slow down science. It will do this for precisely the same reasons that contemporary peer review does and some extra ones. Start by reading @hansonmark.bsky.social thread below, then read on. 🧵
Just tried q.e.d. by @odedrechavi.bsky.social et al. with a few papers including by myself & others where I knew a claim within was flawed based on a misunderstanding of the signal.

1) it was impressive. I see what the hype is about.
2) it hallucinated.

www.qedscience.com

Overly long #SciPub🧵 1/n
q.e.d Science
Critical Thinking AI for constructive criticism and science evaluation
www.qedscience.com
November 6, 2025 at 9:30 PM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
Many of our big insights into brain function come from trying to mimic it, writes @timothyoleary.bsky.social. This lesson should guide how we organize research programs.

www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...

#neuroskyence
Neuroscience needs engineers—for more reasons than you think
Adopting an engineering mindset will help the field focus its research priorities.
www.thetransmitter.org
November 3, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
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
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
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
Bifurcations—an underexplored concept in neuroscience—can help explain how small differences in neural circuits give rise to entirely novel functions, writes Xiao-Jing Wang.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/neural-dynam...
The missing half of the neurodynamical systems theory
Bifurcations—an underexplored concept in neuroscience—can help explain how small differences in neural circuits give rise to entirely novel functions.
www.thetransmitter.org
October 27, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
Want the freedom of a fancy fellowship, but not the year-long wait or arduous application?

Come join my lab! Work on neuroscience and AI, explore your creativity, be independent or work closely with me, collaborate widely, and have a lot of fun!

my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
October 23, 2025 at 10:46 AM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
A study led by Cina Aghamohammadi is now out in ‪@natcomms.nature.com‬! We developed a mathematical framework for partitioning spiking variability, which revealed that spiking irregularity is nearly invariant for each neuron and decreases along the cortical hierarchy.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
October 12, 2025 at 12:42 AM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
Finally out: our recent work with Nick Betley is a view into how the brain reshapes its behavior in the face of competing survival needs- and also a potential angle on treatment targets for enduring pain.

A brief rundown...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A parabrachial hub for need-state control of enduring pain - Nature
Activity in a set of parabranchial neurons in the mouse brain is increased during chronic pain, predicts coping behaviour, and can be modulated by circuits activated by survival threats.
www.nature.com
October 9, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
“Mapping ion channel function” doi.org/10.7554/eLif... isn’t exactly a citation slayer, but it’s still one of my favourites (& my first independent project). Today we push pt 2, where we trace code origin & unite almost all channel models in a common expression. Boom! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
An ion channel omnimodel for standardized biophysical neuron modelling
Biophysical neuron modeling is an indispensable tool in neuroscience research, with the combination of diverse ion channel kinetics and morphologies being used to explain various single-neuron propert...
www.biorxiv.org
October 6, 2025 at 6:25 PM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
Travel awards are available for undergraduate students looking to attend #Cosyne25! The application is short, and the deadline is Nov 12. @cosynemeeting.bsky.social

Application: shorturl.at/6NEyk

More info: www.cosyne.org/travel-grants

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Travel Grants — COSYNE
Apply for COSYNE 2026 Travel Grants to support your participation in Lisbon and Cascais, Portugal. Grants are available for students, postdocs, and PIs, including programs for Childcare, Presenters, N...
www.cosyne.org
October 3, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
In honor of the 75th anniversary of the Turing test, I'm re-upping my short essay, "The Turing Test and our shifting conceptions of intelligence".

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
The Turing Test and our shifting conceptions of intelligence
“Can machines think?” So asked Alan Turing in his 1950 paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” Turing quickly noted that, given the difficulty of defining thinking, the question is “too meaning...
www.science.org
October 2, 2025 at 2:50 PM
Reposted by Bill Podlaski
Interested in doing a Ph.D. to work on building models of the brain/behavior? Consider applying to graduate schools at CU Anschutz:
1. Neuroscience www.cuanschutz.edu/graduate-pro...
2. Bioengineering engineering.ucdenver.edu/bioengineeri...

You could work with several comp neuro PIs, including me.
September 27, 2025 at 8:30 PM