Samuel Eckmann
@samueleckmann.bsky.social
Computational neuroscientist, currently in Cambridge, UK (CBL) as a Newton International Fellow. Interested in neural circuits, E-I balance, and biological learning → http://samueleckmann.github.io
BTSP in visual cortex
Rapid neocortical network modifications via dendritic plateau potential induced plasticity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.19.689338v1
November 20, 2025 at 12:45 PM
BTSP in visual cortex
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
I have so many issues with this podcast with @earlkmiller.bsky.social . I think that this podcast nicely shows why I have trouble with such approaches. Lets go through some of the claims.
Giant Shoulders podcast: Meet the MIT Neuroscientist Proving Brainwaves are the Secret to Consciousness.
youtu.be/7OFb-NG3jIw
#neuroscience
youtu.be/7OFb-NG3jIw
#neuroscience
Meet the MIT Neuroscientist Proving Brain Waves Are the Secret Engine Behind Consciousness
YouTube video by Giant's Shoulder
youtu.be
November 18, 2025 at 8:05 PM
I have so many issues with this podcast with @earlkmiller.bsky.social . I think that this podcast nicely shows why I have trouble with such approaches. Lets go through some of the claims.
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
See our latest - collab with @jess-cardin.bsky.social, led by @andrewmoberly.bsky.social. We combined mesoscopic and 2p imaging to show that learning-dependent plasticity of ACh release in visual cortex drives enhanced visual representations and conditioned behavior. 1/5 tinyurl.com/3cfea6df
Learning-dependent cholinergic plasticity reconfigures cortical circuit dynamics
Neuromodulation by acetylcholine (ACh) plays a critical role in reshaping neural dynamics in the neocortex as a function of development, behavioral state, and learning [1][1]–[6][2]. Prior work sugges...
www.biorxiv.org
November 14, 2025 at 3:02 AM
See our latest - collab with @jess-cardin.bsky.social, led by @andrewmoberly.bsky.social. We combined mesoscopic and 2p imaging to show that learning-dependent plasticity of ACh release in visual cortex drives enhanced visual representations and conditioned behavior. 1/5 tinyurl.com/3cfea6df
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
Out now: Favila, Capece Marsico et al. 2025, Nature Communications: Using longitudinal deep-brain imaging, we report that amygdala interneurons exhibit complex and heterogeneous plasticity during associative learning, at both the single-cell and population level.
👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Heterogeneous plasticity of amygdala interneurons in associative learning and extinction - Nature Communications
In this study, the authors uncover how diverse inhibitory interneurons in the amygdala flexibly contribute to fear and safety learning, revealing a key role for inhibition in emotional memory and adap...
www.nature.com
November 12, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Out now: Favila, Capece Marsico et al. 2025, Nature Communications: Using longitudinal deep-brain imaging, we report that amygdala interneurons exhibit complex and heterogeneous plasticity during associative learning, at both the single-cell and population level.
👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
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
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
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
www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...
#neuroskyence
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
Now that Affinity is fully free I think there’s a solid opportunity for academia to let go of Inkscape and get serious about designing good figures 💁🏻♂️
www.affinity.studio/download
www.affinity.studio/download
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www.affinity.studio
November 1, 2025 at 5:28 PM
Now that Affinity is fully free I think there’s a solid opportunity for academia to let go of Inkscape and get serious about designing good figures 💁🏻♂️
www.affinity.studio/download
www.affinity.studio/download
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
Thrilled that our paper is out today in Nature!
www.nature.com/articles/s4...
www.nature.com/articles/s4...
Sensory expectations shape neural population dynamics in motor circuits
Nature - Experiments with human volunteers and macaques show that expectations produced by probabilistic cueing of future sensory inputs shape motor circuit dynamics in order to increase the...
www.nature.com
October 29, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Thrilled that our paper is out today in Nature!
www.nature.com/articles/s4...
www.nature.com/articles/s4...
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
"Even short, regular check-ins can make a difference. Time spent helping students to solve problems, or simply asking how a project is going, will pay dividends. It also saves time later by catching small problems before they become big ones"
nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com/articles/d41...
What makes PhD students happy? Good supervision
Supervisors who invest in positive mentoring relationships with their PhD candidates also reap the benefits for their own research.
nature.com
October 22, 2025 at 3:22 PM
"Even short, regular check-ins can make a difference. Time spent helping students to solve problems, or simply asking how a project is going, will pay dividends. It also saves time later by catching small problems before they become big ones"
nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com/articles/d41...
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
#JNeurosci: Kashefi et al. dissociate between the “what” and “how” components of motor sequence learning and provides evidence for the development of motoric sequence representations that guide optimal movement execution.
https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0299-25.2025
https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0299-25.2025
September 30, 2025 at 11:31 AM
#JNeurosci: Kashefi et al. dissociate between the “what” and “how” components of motor sequence learning and provides evidence for the development of motoric sequence representations that guide optimal movement execution.
https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0299-25.2025
https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0299-25.2025
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
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
(1/2)
Application: shorturl.at/6NEyk
More info: www.cosyne.org/travel-grants
(1/2)
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
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
(1/2)
Application: shorturl.at/6NEyk
More info: www.cosyne.org/travel-grants
(1/2)
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
A rather 'unique' paper from our lab is online in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social now. Unique in the sense that I don't think anyone else will be rushing to optotag cortical interneurons in the early postnatal brain... because it is nigh on impossible!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
GABAergic circuits reflect different requirements for sensory integration in postnatal mouse neocortex
Information transfer in mammalian cerebral cortex is dependent on GABAergic interneuron circuits that are widely assumed to be uniform across the neoc…
www.sciencedirect.com
September 18, 2025 at 4:16 PM
A rather 'unique' paper from our lab is online in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social now. Unique in the sense that I don't think anyone else will be rushing to optotag cortical interneurons in the early postnatal brain... because it is nigh on impossible!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
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.
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
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.
1. Neuroscience www.cuanschutz.edu/graduate-pro...
2. Bioengineering engineering.ucdenver.edu/bioengineeri...
You could work with several comp neuro PIs, including me.
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
1/
🚨 New preprint! 🚨
Excited and proud (& a little nervous 😅) to share our latest work on the importance of #theta-timescale spiking during #locomotion in #learning. If you care about how organisms learn, buckle up. 🧵👇
📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
💻 code + data 🔗 below 🤩
#neuroskyence
🚨 New preprint! 🚨
Excited and proud (& a little nervous 😅) to share our latest work on the importance of #theta-timescale spiking during #locomotion in #learning. If you care about how organisms learn, buckle up. 🧵👇
📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
💻 code + data 🔗 below 🤩
#neuroskyence
September 17, 2025 at 7:33 PM
1/
🚨 New preprint! 🚨
Excited and proud (& a little nervous 😅) to share our latest work on the importance of #theta-timescale spiking during #locomotion in #learning. If you care about how organisms learn, buckle up. 🧵👇
📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
💻 code + data 🔗 below 🤩
#neuroskyence
🚨 New preprint! 🚨
Excited and proud (& a little nervous 😅) to share our latest work on the importance of #theta-timescale spiking during #locomotion in #learning. If you care about how organisms learn, buckle up. 🧵👇
📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
💻 code + data 🔗 below 🤩
#neuroskyence
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
« Diverse calcium dynamics underlie place field formation in hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells. »
A fundamental study now published @elife.bsky.social
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
A fundamental study now published @elife.bsky.social
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
September 17, 2025 at 12:05 PM
« Diverse calcium dynamics underlie place field formation in hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells. »
A fundamental study now published @elife.bsky.social
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
A fundamental study now published @elife.bsky.social
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
Didn’t want to hijack someone else’s thread, but also: what’s the alternative? Sure, evolution produces sufficient not optimal solutions. Cool. How do we model that? Or if you don’t care about modeling, what predictions does that make that we can test experimentally?
I mean, efficient coding and optimal control work *far* better than they have a right to, and they generate predictions. They are not falsifiable hypotheses except in the narrowest sense, but they are programs that can identify parsimonious principles for explaining real observations.
September 15, 2025 at 1:38 AM
Didn’t want to hijack someone else’s thread, but also: what’s the alternative? Sure, evolution produces sufficient not optimal solutions. Cool. How do we model that? Or if you don’t care about modeling, what predictions does that make that we can test experimentally?
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
Eliezer Yudkowsky, quoted in the NY Times.
For anyone who has followed the "AI Safety" / "Less Wrong" discussions, this is...well, something.
For anyone who has followed the "AI Safety" / "Less Wrong" discussions, this is...well, something.
September 14, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Eliezer Yudkowsky, quoted in the NY Times.
For anyone who has followed the "AI Safety" / "Less Wrong" discussions, this is...well, something.
For anyone who has followed the "AI Safety" / "Less Wrong" discussions, this is...well, something.
M1, not so low-d after all:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
September 8, 2025 at 8:51 PM
M1, not so low-d after all:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
Of potential interest to those keen on motor control and/or multi-task networks. Congrats to Elom and Eric.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Motor cortex flexibly deploys a high-dimensional repertoire of subskills
Skilled movement often requires flexibly combining multiple subskills, each requiring dedicated control strategies and underlying computations. How the motor system achieves such versatility remains u...
www.biorxiv.org
September 8, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Of potential interest to those keen on motor control and/or multi-task networks. Congrats to Elom and Eric.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Everything Everywhere ...
Two flagship papers from the International Brain Laboratory, now out in @Nature.com:
🧠 Brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour: doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09235-0
🧠 Brain-wide representations of prior information in mouse decision-making: doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09226-1 +
🧠 Brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour: doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09235-0
🧠 Brain-wide representations of prior information in mouse decision-making: doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09226-1 +
September 3, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Everything Everywhere ...
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
Hippocampal theta sweeps indicate goal direction https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.21.671551v1
August 26, 2025 at 4:15 AM
Hippocampal theta sweeps indicate goal direction https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.21.671551v1
„it is important that the theorist’s
tendency towards reductionism does not cloud out the complexity
of the living brain“
tendency towards reductionism does not cloud out the complexity
of the living brain“
I wrote a Comment on neurotheory, and now you can read it!
Some thoughts on where neurotheory has and has not taken root within the neuroscience community, how it has shaped those subfields, and where we theorists might look next for fresh adventures.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Some thoughts on where neurotheory has and has not taken root within the neuroscience community, how it has shaped those subfields, and where we theorists might look next for fresh adventures.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Theoretical neuroscience has room to grow
Nature Reviews Neuroscience - The goal of theoretical neuroscience is to uncover principles of neural computation through careful design and interpretation of mathematical models. Here, I examine...
www.nature.com
August 20, 2025 at 7:04 PM
„it is important that the theorist’s
tendency towards reductionism does not cloud out the complexity
of the living brain“
tendency towards reductionism does not cloud out the complexity
of the living brain“
Reposted by Samuel Eckmann
Is it possible to go from spikes to rates without averaging?
We show how to exactly map recurrent spiking networks into recurrent rate networks, with the same number of neurons. No temporal or spatial averaging needed!
Presented at Gatsby Neural Dynamics Workshop, London.
We show how to exactly map recurrent spiking networks into recurrent rate networks, with the same number of neurons. No temporal or spatial averaging needed!
Presented at Gatsby Neural Dynamics Workshop, London.
From Spikes To Rates
YouTube video by Gerstner Lab
youtu.be
August 8, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Is it possible to go from spikes to rates without averaging?
We show how to exactly map recurrent spiking networks into recurrent rate networks, with the same number of neurons. No temporal or spatial averaging needed!
Presented at Gatsby Neural Dynamics Workshop, London.
We show how to exactly map recurrent spiking networks into recurrent rate networks, with the same number of neurons. No temporal or spatial averaging needed!
Presented at Gatsby Neural Dynamics Workshop, London.