I am deeply excited to share that I will be joining @AsteraInstitute to start a new effort to understand how the brain generates consciousness and intelligence.

It breaks my heart to see a postdoc’s NRSA grant rejection summary statement citing mixed undergraduate grades from a decade ago as a weakness. Reviewers: you have a lot of power to empower or discourage young people, use it wisely.

In college my life was transformed by a scholarship from @Caltech to do summer research in Germany. In the spirit of paying it forward, w/ help from @macfound, I’d like offer a 6K summer travel stipend to an undergraduate woman interested in neuroscience. Inspired by @DulacLab

I, and every scientist I've talked to, believe the end result of this devastating cut will be that Universities will simply pass on the buck to investigators. Many of us fervently agree that university administrations & bureaucracy should be downsized and reformed. This maneuver is going to do nothing to actually instigate that change, it is simply going to result in a giant DIRECT cut to biomedical science in this country that is going to cripple science, lead to layoffs of hardworking students and postdocs with big dreams who are the country's future, and destroy this country's scientific pre-eminence. I personally find it hard to fathom how Elon Musk and pals, who clearly understand the value and beauty of science deeply, could not see this endgame and...hesitate. This is matricide. @shaunmmaguire @elonmusk

It's hard to express how grateful and unworthy I feel to receive this honor. It feels embarrassing to be distinguished for discoveries that depend on the contributions of so many. I thank my mentors Marge Livingstone and David Hubel for their love and faith. I thank the students and postdocs in my lab for their creativity, brilliance, and perseverance. The greatest gift is to be able to dream together with them. I thank the field of macaque systems neuroscience for giving me my life as a scientist. I believe this award recognizes the irreplaceable role of our field in advancing understanding of the brain. It is especially gratifying to receive this together with @Nancy_Kanwisher, one of my scientific heroes. The story of how the brain represents faces is an ongoing dialogue between human and macaque neuroscience--a dialogue that has just begun. Though I started on this path by accident, I have come to realize that the humble problem of perceiving a face is a microcosm of the problem of perceiving the world.

Unbelievable: the famed Berkeley Math Circle is being forced to shut down due to a bureaucratic requirement where a guest lecturer giving an hour long lesson needs to be officially fingerprinted. How is fingerprinting even still a thing in the 21st century? Chancellor Lyons @richlyons: can you see the absurdity of the situation and figure out a solution? dailycal.org/news/campus/gen…

How does perception of objects arise? Objects undergo huge changes in appearance due to deformation, perspective change, & dynamic occlusion. We prove from first principles that it’s possible, without learning, to perceive invariant objects despite this. arxiv.org/abs/2107.02036

I am excited to announce that my lab will be moving to @UCBerkeley in fall 2021. Grateful to join the incredible neuroscience community @UCBerkeleyNeuro @berkeleyMCB and become part of an institution that is truly disruptive, scientifically and culturally.

Sad to learn about the passing of Mark Konishi. A humble son of two silk weavers from Kyoto, he came to this country to study how birds learn to sing, and gained some of the first glimpses into the beauty and precision of the neural circuits that give rise to behavior.

So happy to hear that the hero of my youth, Roger Penrose, has been awarded the Nobel Prize. His honesty in stating that existing physical laws can't explain consciousness influenced me hugely. I used to daydream about being his grad student.

I am beyond excited to share a new paper “Rapid, concerted switching of the neural code in inferotemporal cortex,” led by @Yuelin_Shi and Dasheng Bi. We describe a new form of neural computation in which single neurons rapidly change their tuning to temporally multiplex different functions. In < 20 ms, cells switch from a code optimized for face detection to a code optimized for face discrimination. I think this discovery fundamentally changes our current concept of neural representation. (1/N) biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…

The figure below by Roger Penrose is perhaps my favorite figure of all time. It so powerfully and inspiringly rejects the notion of 'primacy' and embraces the notion of a single mystery to be solved.

If you're an African American college student with dreams about understanding the brain, email me an essay about those dreams--I'd be so grateful to hear your story. I will give a 6K scholarship to one person as a tiny token of encouragement #BlackLivesMatter #HBCU #TinySteps

Thank you so much for this incredible honor! The well wishes from my scientific heroes have been overwhelming. Most of all, I thank my mentors-Marge, DH, and my dad-and my amazing collaborators and lab members past and present. This moment is for you

This past week in Norway for Kavli Prize Week felt like a lucid dream—a transformative experience of cultural discovery, scientific camaraderie, and moments of deep personal reflection. From arriving in Oslo and being whisked away to the historic Grand Hotel, to the awe-inspiring award ceremony, to spontaneous chats with people who’ve shaped entire fields, every day was filled with incredible encounters and unforgettable events. A highlight for me was giving a talk to high school students together with Astrophysics Laureate David Charbonneau and Nanoscience Laureate Bob Langer. We shared our unconventional paths in science and as well as some life lessons (Bob’s first job was in the Nutrition Science Department at MIT because the field he wanted to work in, at the interface between chemical engineering and medicine, didn’t yet exist; David only had the courage to study physics after encouragement from his mother who could see how enthralled he was by Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time, and was told by the first professor he worked for that he lacked what it takes to be a scientist). I told about how I went from playing with Barbie dolls to falling in love with science after reading Feynman Volume 1. I also shared the nuggets of wisdom that I always return to, which are essentially all variations on one theme: Follow your own inner vision. The award ceremony itself was an event of pure, unalloyed joy, marked by heartfelt tributes to our work, amazing musical performances by children, and a deep sense of camaraderie among the laureates (we were like kindergartners during the rehearsal for the ceremony, memorizing which hand to use to shake the King’s hand). I felt elated after the ceremony and wanted to ditch my heels and run through the streets of Oslo, as it hit me: This was bigger than any of us. It wasn’t about the awards. It was about collectively, unabashedly celebrating the indomitable human spirit that seeks to understand the universe. Despite the joy of the celebrations, there were also moments of pain and reflection on past dreams and choices. The week set a new personal record for me in surviving on minimal sleep: I think I got ~6 hours total across the whole week. Due to some combination of lack of sleep and emotion, I completely forgot what I was going say in the first slide of my lecture. The moment that perhaps meant the most to me: Walking down the grand staircase to the banquet, arm-in-arm with my father. All the other laureates descended with their partners. But it was my father who walked beside me, wearing a tux for the first time in his life—a figure who has been there since my first steps, my earliest dreams, and every critical moment of my journey. He was my first mentor in science, the person who showed me how the problem of vision is mathematically beautiful and profound, plotted with me to gain admission to Caltech, instilled in me the confidence to believe I could be a worthwhile scientist, and continues to inspire me with his example of unrelenting curiosity and hard work. Walking down the stairs next to him was ecstatically right. As I return back to real life, I feel an overwhelming gratitude to Fred Kavli, the Kavli Foundation, and the beautiful country of Norway, and rededicated to this vast, beautiful endeavor to understand the world beneath the surface.

Very excited to share a new study led by Francisco Luongo & @attractor_Lu (co-first), w/ Andy Ho, @HesseJanis, @joe_wekselblatt, @FrankLanfranchi & Daniel Huber. We tested the ability of 4 species–mouse, tree shrew, mouse lemur, and macaque–to see the figure below. (1/9)

I find it unfortunate that kids applying to grad school (and even college) are all expected to have already done serious science. David Hubel started doing science at the age of 30 (so don't lose hope, late bloomers and errant explorers). @pollyp1 nitter.app/pollyp1/status/9490430…

Do single neurons matter? Or are all population codes differing by a linear transform equivalent? @irinavlh leads an exciting new study suggesting the former: activity of single neurons can be meaningful and uniquely specified. arxiv.org/abs/2006.14304 1/2

1/ Congratulations to Pinglei Bao @bobking for a remarkable finding: IT cortex contains a coarse map of object space repeated 3 times. The maps comprise the known face & body networks plus two new networks. nature.com/articles/s41586-0…

Send me an essay describing where you want to go this summer and why. Open to undergraduate women from anywhere in the world. Please keep your essay < 1000 words, email to dortsao@caltech.edu by June 10, 2019 Please retweet

A month ago, an amazing gift fell in my lap. @YiMaTweets sent me his manuscript with @harryshum on the two principles underlying Intelligence. This is a monumental paper, clarifying the puzzle of how intelligence arises through a beautiful series of deductions. (1/n)

If you're a #BlackinSTEM student or post-doc, and need informal mentorship, someone to answer your questions about work & career stuff, opportunities to give talks, etc, I'm here. My field is systems neuroscience (visual perception)

(1/16) Excited to share new work on the neural code for memories of familiar faces in macaque IT and perirhinal cortex, led by Liang She w/ @Yuelin_Shi and collaborators Marcus Benna @NeuroTheoryUCSD and @StefanoFusi2. biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…

Omg!!! I did a double take when I saw 'Nobel Prize,' and figured @NicoleCRust was making a very cool joke, because John Hopfield certainly deserves the Nobel Prize. Then I heard the news. What a right and perfect and monumentally inspired choice, celebrating the boundary between physics, math, and biology where the most interesting phenomena happen!!! Congratulations to Goeff Hinton and John Hopfield! This is profoundly moving for all of us in systems neuroscience.

Heartfelt thanks to all the amazing young women who applied (from 16 countries) and shared their dreams with me. I am happy to award the scholarship to Kyoko Kusano of Keio University in Japan who plans to study consciousness in Giulio Tononi’s lab at the University of Wisconsin.

Adieu, Caltech

To everyone who has been shocked and depressed by the staggering 40% cut to the BRAIN Initiative: we have a voice! Outside Witness Testimony (aka written testimony) for the FY 2025 appropriations cycle is ongoing. Deadline for the House side is Friday May 3 and the Senate side is Friday May 24. Let's all write in with our thoughts about what this cut means for scientific progress and for medical advances to help patients suffering the most devastating neurological and psychiatric illnesses. Please see instruction links and more information here: House Outside Witness Testimony: appropriations.house.gov/sit… Senate Outside Witness Testimony: appropriations.senate.gov/im… Please RT @SfNtweets @MichaelJFoxOrg @alzassociation @alsassociation

The veil is off. Cutting NSF Graduate Fellowships by half is a pure attack on science. If you believe in meritocracy, this is it. If you believe in STEM, this is where it starts. If you believe in Making America Great Again, this is what it looks like.

Responses were irreproducible from trial to trial, he was totally frustrated...then he discovered the beautiful reason for the lack of reproducibility: LEC cells are actually coding flow of time. So proud of my brother Albert!

This is unbelievable. How can a country that cares about the future begrudge $300 million to unlock the secrets of the mind and cure the most devastating ailments of the soul? This is 0.0035% of the federal budget. If you make 100k a year, this works out to $3.50. A coffee to invest on a project that almost certainly will change the future of medicine and humanity. Am writing to Barbara Lee, Alex Padilla, and Laphonza Butler now. I don't think I have ever personally felt how nonsensical the federal budget is.

Excited to share our new work on the large-scale organization of the tree shrew visual system, led by @FrankLanfranchi with @joe_wekselblatt & Daniel Wagenaar! We trace the evolutionary roots of the primate ventral visual pathway—revealing surprises like face cells in a non-social animal and IT-like object coding in V2.

Interested in helping run a lab to understand visual perception in primates? The Tsao lab @UCBerkeley is looking for a new lab manager. Vet tech and/or previous NHP experience a plus, but also open to other highly motivated candidates. We do ephys, fMRI, and much more. Please RT

Excited that our paper on perceptual and memory codes in IT cortex, led by the phenomenal Liang She, in collaboration with Marcus Benna and @StefanoFusi2, is finally out: nature.com/articles/s41586-0… Research Briefing: nature.com/articles/d41586-0… Original thread on biorxiv paper: nitter.app/doristsao/status/13705… In a nutshell, we find that at long latency, IT face cells use a completely different code to represent familiar compared to unfamiliar faces. We speculate that such temporal multiplexing is the general mechanism by which the brain represents long-term memories alongside physical features. Since the biorxiv preprint, we: 1) Recorded in another face patch TP and found that it did not show axis change at long latency, demonstrating that the phenomenon is localized to specific regions of the temporal lobe. 2) Performed a new behavioral experiment confirming monkeys’ superior performance on familiar face identification. 3) Performed new recordings with a set of perfectly feature-matched unfamiliar faces to be 100% sure our results were not due to feature differences between familiar and unfamiliar faces. 4) Tested in two monkeys whether face patch TP shows a substantially stronger response to familiar than unfamiliar faces, as reported by Landi & Freiwald (Science 2021). We could not replicate their finding. See also Boyle et al. Neuron 2024 for related findings in mice: nitter.app/LorenzoPosani/st…

Huge congratulations to the one and only Nicole Rust @VisualMemoryLab on the 2021 NAS Troland Research Award! Nicole brings such elegance, computational rigor, and creativity to understanding the wilderness of visual memory ow.ly/g4Qc50CZUv8

1/5 “Having conscious experience is arguably the most important reason why it matters to us whether we are alive or dead” And this is just the first line in the new work by the amazing Janis Hesse biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…

It was an honor and joy to chat with Sean Carroll. We talked about vision, consciousness, the bridge between sensory and symbolic processing, and a few other little things in this preposterous universe...

Does anyone else feel existential sadness and depression this week? #gpt

Every once in a blue moon, you come across a creative work that defies its time and place. "The epistemological problem for automata" by Donald Mackay (1956) is one of those revelations. A hierarchy of dynamic receptive fields can learn new concepts. drive.google.com/open?id=1te…

Christmas dimsum with my lab. We speak 7 languages (not counting python and matlab). 新年快乐!

Beautiful piece by James Somers @jsomers probing the question "What is thought?" I enjoyed it on many levels--for learning other neuroscientists' take on LLMS, for the great book recommendations, for the framing of the problem in my favorite form--the story of an individual intellectual quest, and last but not least, for capturing the peculiar, paradoxical sadness of this moment. newyorker.com/magazine/2025/…

It's been a long time since I read an experimental paper that changed my view of how the brain works. This extraordinary paper does that, showing massive intelligent information transfer within LIP, and challenging the concept of LIP as a stepstone to allocentric representation.

An oft-told story in the field of consciousness studies is that activity in V1 reflects the physical stimulus while activity in IT cortex reflects only what is consciously perceived. It’s an appealing story, but @HesseJanis shows it’s not true. elifesciences.org/articles/5…

Hojin Jang and Frank Tong make a compelling case that training DNNs with blurry images (which we're constantly subjected to for objects outside our focal plane) substantially increases alignment with human vision. Blur-trained DNNs explain human fMRI responses better and show increased shape bias nature.com/articles/s41467-0…

So many puzzles about face processing have suddenly become clear to me in the last few days. I cannot wait to share...

Heard a podcast about Feynman yesterday in the car, where @presk made an interesting, against the grain comment about Feynman that I appreciated (even though reading Feynman Volume 1 is how I fell in love with science): "It’s not the best advice necessarily for all students, you know — “Put all the books away and figure it out yourself.” Well, there’s something to that. Of course, if you really do think it through for yourself and solve it yourself, then you arrive at a deeper appreciation than if you just read about it. That’s true. But, you know, all those other guys and gals who’ve been writing all these papers and books, they’re not so dumb. And they know some things that maybe you should know, too. So sometimes I felt, you know, he put a little too much emphasis on “you got to work it out yourself.” But that was very much part of his credo. You know, by the time I knew Feynman — I came to Caltech in 1983, and he died four and a half years later. And I don’t think he was the Feynman of legend. He was still extraordinary in terms of the depth of curiosity. And he still had the charisma, and, of course, a great storyteller. But maybe he wasn’t as great a physicist as he might have been." I think he is speaking to how individual brilliance can be limiting. I think also with fields, there are fields that inherently depend on individual brilliance and those that depend on collective determination. Neuroscience is in the latter camp--the amount of resources, techniques, knowledge, and man and woman power necessary to push the frontier forward is so far beyond what the brilliance of any single person can achieve. This is not to say that we are a bunch of worker bees. But I think the dependence we all have on each other can't help but make us humble. In contrast, there is a reason philosophy is often linked with a specific piece of furniture. It is a solitary endeavor, where individual brilliance is essential.

Interested in helping run a lab to understand visual perception in primates? Tsao lab @UCBerkeley is looking for a new lab manager. Perfect for highly motivated candidates who want to gain deep research experience before grad school. Experience with NHPs is a plus. Please RT🙏

This is heartbreaking. Through the entire decade of the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain that I've been so lucky to be part of, he came to every talk. I wondered where he was at this year's meeting, which ended earlier this week. He stands alone in the olympic magnitude of his contributions to the global scientific community. May his vision inspire others.

Remarkable detective work by Lindsey Salay at Caltech. She discovered a thalamic nucleus, SPFp, with neurons that selectively respond to touch *when an animal is sexually aroused*, triggering release of mounting behavior. Inhibition of this tiny group of neurons causes complete elimination of consummatory mating actions! (In case you're wondering how I got involved in a paper on mouse mating: David Anderson told me about a phenomenon of 'object craving' that could be triggered by stimulation of a specific mouse hypothalamic pathway...I thought this could be a powerful entrypoint to study object vision in mice...I was wrong, the behavior turned out to be purely driven by touch, but it was amazing to watch Lindsey figure out all the pieces of the actual circuit that enables a sensory stimulus to trigger a powerful behavior.)

Breaking news: a wonderful colleague which wishes to remain anonymous has decided to pitch in 6K to fund a second scholarship! I'm delighted to announce the winner, Nicole Coates, who hopes to pursue a PhD in cognitive science @BlackInNeuro

My brother is in the New Yorker: newyorker.com/science/elemen…

Our new paper comparing many different computational models for explaining face representation in IT cortex is out. The study was led by the amazing Le Chang, with collaborators @VisionBernie and Thomas Vetter.

The perception of occlusion is amazing.

Super excited about @WadiaVarun ’s new preprint providing what I think is the most compelling single-neuron evidence for the existence of a generative model in the human brain. Varun first showed that human VTC uses the exact same single-cell coding principles as macaque IT cortex, before then asking how this code is used during mental imagery (something very hard to study in monkeys). So thankful to Varun for spearheading this amazing collaboration with @UeliRutishauser!

“The path to real AI does not run solely through Silicon Valley. It runs through laboratories studying real neurons, real circuits and real cognition in the brains of our primate relatives.” 🎯

I am so happy to finally see this in print: pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pn… Next step: to see this in the brain

This Master's Thesis by Gerben van den Broeke on generative models and how the brain discovers structure in the world is amazing. It's the most lucid, inspiring, joy sparking piece of scientific writing I've read in a long while. archive.treora.com/2016/thes…

I’m delighted to announce the winner of the scholarship, @ghezae_isaias from UCSB. His early experience with injustice has taken him on a thrilling intellectual path. Read his inspiring story & share in his joy of discovery, borne of pain @BlackInNeuro dropbox.com/s/up01duhl3xjddx…

An understanding advisor makes all the difference. It’s special to get this together with Marge Livingstone (who should’ve been elected ages ago). Me, scared to ask if I could join the lab: 'Can I talk to you about my future?' Marge: 'Yes, I already ordered an amplifier for you.'

I wrote an essay in honor of Charlie Gross. It's a celebration of the lone explorer, a story about the ups and downs of scientific fortune, and a reply to the perennial argument that recording from single neurons doesn't tell us much about the brain. sciencedirect.com/science/ar…

I once heard @ylecun give a talk where he said 'either god exists or the world is compositional.' I love this so much--it explains everything from the reductionist basis for science to the reason why generative models of reality can exist to why the brain is modular.

Agree completely this 2 yr limit on k99 eligibility is an absolutely horrible idea that discourages free exploration. One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Urmila Mahadev, who spent 8 years in her PhD solving one of the hardest problems in quantum computing: "I was never thinking of graduation, because my goal was never graduation." quantamagazine.org/graduate-…

Segmentation remains one of the most fundamental yet poorly understood processes of vision. @HesseJanis has discovered one important new puzzle piece: functional modules specialized for segmentation distributed across extrastriate cortex (V2, V3, V3A, V4, and V4A)

A group of tenured PIs trying to do a simple experiment

To everyone who was offended: I apologize for my clumsy and unintentionally hurtful phrasing. I actually was trying to make the point that people who do three postdocs can be extraordinary, the fact they continue to persevere is a strength, and I'm married to such a person.

A toy model of consciousness :) green wheel = world, red wheel = brain. The structure of the red wheel encodes the structure of the green wheel. Reminds me of Matilde Marcolli's lecture on Manin's theory of neural codes and homotopy types.

Greg made this for me for my birthday. He even included electodes and new cortical targets, cause he knows I'm not just the face patch girl.

Congratulations @maxhodak_ and team, remarkable achievement! "I can see again."

A beautiful idea in search of evidence: medium.com/the-spike/generat…

As our country debates the capabilities of a particular neural network, the importance of fundamental research in neuroscience is clearer than ever.

IT cortex contains two regions where cells code object colors largely invariant to their shape. One of them codes all the colors of the rainbow, while the other is specialized for red/yellow objects. nature.com/articles/s41467-0…

Another wonderful colleague who wishes to remain anonymous has stepped up and offered to provide a 6K Rising Star in Neuroscience Scholarship to a young Black scientist with big dreams. I am so happy to announce the winner, Jonathan Daniels @JSDaniels97 @BlackInNeuro #blackinstem

Play on this idea: neurosci depts could hire small teams of young scientists with common goal, not just individuals.

Great job opportunity to start a neuroscience lab at the best public university in the world 👇

When will the darkness lift? Heartbroken over the senseless death of my sisters

We are searching for a new lab manager. Great opportunity to learn about visual neuroscience, NHP research, and cutting-edge techniques in electrophysiology, fMRI, and data analysis. Excellent springboard to grad/med school. Email me if you are interested.

I think my most heretical idea is that the brain possesses a whole palette of different labels to label distinct surfaces, not just "figure" and "ground". In other words, we can directly perceive that two objects is different from one. Surprising how few people agree with me on this.

Thanks from bottom of my heart to @ClaireWyart for bringing us all together at FENS for one of the most meaningful musical experiences of my life.

I am hearing so many heartbreaking stories about scientists who had exciting proposals lined up, or even great scores on already reviewed grants, now confronted with "Canceled" signs everywhere. When I was looking for a job, I was told not to accept an offer outside the US because "the political system is unstable" and "promised funding could be snatched away at any moment." This feels like it is now happening here. The funding system we scientists rely on as much as children rely on their parents is starting to falter. But let's try to stay optimistic: this is a singular mistake that can be reversed if we all unite. Please take 5 min to write to Congress!

Last night's #Feynman100 celebration at Caltech triggered so many emotions...love for Caltech, sense of nostalgia, realization that when you spend all your time thinking (or not), it changes your character...it's not sth you can hide.

Don’t count on your professor knowing anything, because they’re too busy writing grants, traveling, and sitting on committees to have time to mind such trivialities as the research happening in their lab.

At 20, I sent an email to a dozen professors across Harvard asking for book recommendations. Today, I want to send an email to all my colleagues asking for tips on how to deal with email

Did you know that @AstroBehnken's PhD advisor was @Caltech's own Richard Murray, incoming chair of Biology & Biological Engineering?

If you are working in neuroAI (or simply curious about it) you should come. This meeting is going to be amazing, check out the speakers 👇

I'm teaching a new class in the spring on neuroscience, film, and philosophy, where we watch movies, talk about brains, and speculate about philosophical conundrums. Thank you for writing this great course syllabus! :)

No words for this senseless collective punishment

I have also followed this situation with appalled fascination. As children, we are taught simple commands, “Do not lie.” “Do no steal.” “Do not cheat.” But then we grow up and learn about the real world. And it turns out that in order not to lie, sometimes you have to lie. This essential contradiction is something that has always bothered me, and it’s why I find it so thrilling to read biographies and learn how Lincoln deftly played politics to ultimately achieve goals that an outward absolutist like Sumner never could, how Beethoven shamelessly lied to his publishers about works he had already sold to others to gain the material support he needed to create his immortal art. Achieving Veritas in any realm is so tortuously difficult and must involve many compromises. Yet, it remains the only thing worth fighting for. In this particular situation, it seems obvious to me where things stand. It is not tenable for the leader of an institution whose central mission is to teach young people to seek Veritas, to have committed these acts and not show any contrition, nor for the board to defend and minimize these acts. This is putting politics before Veritas, not in service of it. theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv…

Very interesting! One argument I find compelling for why the brain *does* have a generative model that fills in fine details from higher-level hypotheses is the *ineluctable consistency* of visual perception across different levels of representation. When you see the vase over the face, you also see all the local figure ground relationships flip. Most neuroscientists assume that object identity (face vs vase) is represented in a later area (IT cortex) than local figure ground relationships (V2). Furthermore, the V2 cells representing the left contour are probably not directly talking to the V2 cells representing the right contour. This raises the puzzle: where does the ineluctable consistency come from? *If* the brain harbored a generative model, and consciousness was entirely due to top-down generated contents, then one could explain this consistency beautifully: what we perceive is always consistent across levels because it is generated to be so. But if you don't believe the brain has a generative model, then you would need to propose an alternative explanation. Very curious to hear your thoughts!

Congratulations to my amazing, endlessly creative, and fearless colleague Yang Dan!

Thank you @alison_c_abbott for spending time with me and for writing such a thoughtful piece, even though I still have zero @nature papers.

How does the brain build a model of the visual world?  Come see how we’re tackling this problem, across tree shrews, monkeys, and humans, across temporal and parietal cortex, and across perception, memory, and consciousness.  Tuesday AM, poster session 488 #SfN2019

I wrote a review with @HesseJanis about the macaque face patch system. Apologies to those who find the title gruesome, it's meant to convey how the face patches make seemingly inaccessible questions about the brain tractable nature.com/articles/s41583-0…

Great science stands the test of time. In a way, all my work has just been about clarifying this one paragraph from Charlie Gross. I will miss him.

I resonate deeply with the concept presented here that the key to robust intelligence is invariant-preserving feedback loops, and that a training environment that can generate such feedback is crucial. (and wow--I had no idea my scientific soul brother was a youtube personality who looks like the Rock and posts on vixra because he couldn't find someone to endorse him for arxiv)

So valuable! Embarrassing how many times we have had to"rediscover" this

What a beautiful, truly visionary talk by @MatthiasBethge! Resonate so much with the idea that knowing how to parse incoming information so that we update our world model appropriately (#1-3 below) is a key missing piece in our current understanding of the brain. piped.video/live/T1fnclYPtu0

Tirin Moore @StanfordBrain @HHMINEWS will receive the 2021 NAS Pradel Research Award recognizing his groundbreaking contributions to understanding visual attention! Congrats Tirin!!!

The treatment of Prof. Nikos Logothetis by the MPI @MaxPlanckPress is shameful. Please see a summary of the situation and statements of support by scientists worldwide (including myself) here: speakingofresearch.com/2018/…

Dear @congressdotgov: Why don't lawmakers propose laws in the spirit of scientific hypotheses? For example: "Let's ban guns for a year and count # of gun deaths. If there's no reduction, we revert to current law." Perhaps we can converge to the ideal society faster?

My success as a woman in science is thanks to Mao Zedong. My dad's absolute belief in me gave me my self confidence. He in turn was strongly influenced by Mao's belief in intellectual equality of men and women.

In 99/100 cases, people who do three postdocs have a fatal weakness. In 1/100 cases, it's because they stay true to their dream despite all obstacles: Greg's dream is to program molecules and build new forms of life. He is just getting started.