We also have a review out in JNeuro on the topic with @neurosutras.bsky.social, Tom O'Dell, Anant Jain, @clopathlab.bsky.social and Mark Sheffield.
Physical copies available at @sfnjournals.bsky.social booth.
www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...

Read this in detail and my god, I was blown away by the discovery of this subset of SST+ interneurons in deep V1 L2/3! They are not tuned by orientation; they are activated rather than suppressed by ensemble stimulation; their visually evoked responses are highly correlated. How cool is that🫡

Been there haha- this is a mom and pop eatery that does not even show up on maps! It’s in the old town area in Weinan Shaanxi (~40 miles east of Xi’an), I’m more than happy to take you if you are in the area😁

It was legendary😻

Was the noodle worth it? You bet😉

I can think of two possible scenarios as to why my brain made that decision. It either got a threat probability low enough (unlikely given the crazy drivers), or it decided that the craving for the best noodle in the world outweighed the threat even when it’s high (knowing myself, very likely).

Funny enough for me, I had to park on the other side of this two-way street filled with reckless drivers and cyclists and cross it to get my noodle. My brain must had computed frenziedly while I was kinda risking my life for something seemingly very trivial.

So from the leftmost (where cars rush by at 75mph) to the rightmost side (where people are causally eating food), you have a “threat gradient”, and then you have to decide which part of this gradient is safe. Our brain achieves this by calculating threat probabilities in real time.

We sat outside on the sidewalk- a common dining environment if you want to grab a quick bite in a small Chinese city. Strangely, it reminded me of a talk by Michael Mcdannald from Boston College (at Tufts symposium), who started the talk with a picture featuring a similar environment in Thailand.