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Brain Space Time Podcast: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Akseli Ilmanen
Neuroscience is full of open questions. The most fundamental come down to space and time. What can place cells, grid cells and cognitive maps tell us about the evolutionary history from spatial navigation to abstract cognition? Do temporal dynamics between neural oscillations of different frequencies explain how information is structured in the brain? And are there species differences in how time is perceived? To find answers, or at least better questions, I am interviewing researchers in neuroscience, philosophy and physics.Twitter: https://twitter.com/akseli_ilmanen
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- Oct 1, 202444 min
#9 Hugo Merchant: Neuronal population clocks
I just visited the ESI SyNC 2024 conference on the topic of "Time in the brain". There, I interviewed Hugo Merchant, an electrophysiologist at UNAM in Juriquilla, Mexico. Hugo works with macaques, who can rhythmically tap their fingers synchronized to a visual or auditory beat. By studying macaque neural activity in dimensionality-reduced spaces, he wants to understand how the brain encodes different time intervals. For an overview of our conversation, see the timestamps below. Timestamps: - Intro - Monkeys rhythmic finger tapping - Timing network in pre-motor cortex and basal ganglia - Circular neural trajectories - Mapping latent space to single-cell physiology - Experimentally slowing the clock - Spatial organization of circuits - Error correction & single-trial analyses - Bayesian & SNN models Hugo's Website Hugo's publications & talks: Betancourt et al., 2023 - Amodal population clock in the primate medial premotor system for rhythmic tapping paper Pérez et al., 2023 - Rhythmic tapping to a moving beat: motion kinematics overrules motion naturalness - preprint (Bayesian model) ESI SyNC 2024 Talk (should be uploaded within a month here) Other papers/books mentioned: Shine, 2021 - The thalamus integrates the macrosystems of the brain to facilitate complex, adaptive brain network dynamics paper Zemlianova et al., 2024 - A Recurrent Neural Network for Rhythmic Timing preprint (SNN model) For Apple Podcast users, find books/papers links at: https://akseliilmanen.wixsite.com/home/post/pod09 My Twitter @akseli_ilmanen Email: akseli.ilmanen[at]gmail.com Brain Space Time Podcast, my blog, other stuff Music: Space News, License: Z62T4V3QWL
- Dec 13, 202356 min
#8 Uri Hasson: Language in the real world for brains and AI
Uri Hasson runs a lab in Princeton, where he investigates the underlying neural basis of natural language acquisition and processing as it unfolds in the real world. As Uri visited Tübingen (where I am doing my master's), we were able to meet in person. Originally, I planned to talk about his idea of temporal receptive windows, and how different brain regions (e.g. default mode network) operate at different timescales. However, we ended up talking more about Wittgenstein, evolution, and ChatGPT. An underlying thread throughout the conversation was that (for both biological and artificial agents), language is not clever symbol and rule manipulation but a brute force fitting to statistics across (Wittgensteinian) 'contexts'. This view is best articulated in Uri's Direct Fit paper. We also connect this to transformers and discuss what's missing in AI. The answer here is multimodal integration, episodic memory, and interactive sociality). At the end, I ask Uri about his 1000 days project, talking to crows, and "understanding" in neuroscience/AI. For Apple Podcast users, find books/papers links at: https://akseliilmanen.wixsite.com/home/post/pod08 Uri's Website Twitter: @HassonLab Uri's publications & talks: Hasson et al., 2015 - Hierarchical process memory: memory as an integral component of information processing Temporal receptive windows paper Hasson et al., 2020 - Direct Fit to Nature: An Evolutionary Perspective on Biological and Artificial Neural Networks paper Yeshurun et al., 2021 - The default mode network: where the idiosyncratic self meets the shared social world paper Goldstein et al., 2022 - The Temporal Structure of Language Processing in the Human Brain Corresponds to The Layered Hierarchy of Deep Language Models preprint Nguyen et al., 2022 - Teacher student neural coupling during teaching and learning paper Goldstein et al., 2022 - Shared computational principles for language processing in humans and deep language models paper Also mentioned: Podcast episode with Tony Zador on Genomic Bottlenecks link My Twitter @akseli_ilmanen Email: akseli.ilmanen[at]gmail.com Brain Space Time Podcast, my blog, other stuff Music: Space News, License: Z62T4V3QWL Timestamps: - Intro - Studying language in the real world - Wittgenstein - Evolution and the default mode network - Overparameterized deep learning works - Direct Fit paper and generalization - Episodic memory and sociality in language models - 1000 days project and talking to crows - "Understanding" in neuroscience
- Dec 5, 20231h 20m
#7 Kevin Mitchell: Free Agents (in an evolving block universe)
Kevin Mitchell is an Associate Professor of Genetics and Neuroscience at the Trinity College Dublin. He recently published his second book, "Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will." It's a rigorous defense for why we (and other living systems) have free will, arguing all the way from quantum indeterminacy, to C. elegans, to how humans can form abstracted meanings over very long timescales. We also go beyond the book, exploring how free will links to unresolved questions in physics about the discrepancy of microscopic laws being time-invariant and macroscopic laws having a time asymmetry (entropy increase over time). And how the 'present' does it exist and how its duration might differ for a fly vs a human. Kevin also does a great job of explaining why top-down causality and meaning are not just some mythical concepts, but how it scientifically makes sense to speak of neural activity in terms of 'what this means for the orgasm', and how coarse-gaining allows hierarchical control structures to do causal work on this 'meaning-level'. In the end, we also talk about what kind of research Kevin would like to see and advice on learning across disciplines. For Apple Podcast users, find books/papers links at: https://akseliilmanen.wixsite.com/home/post/pod07 Kevin's Website Twitter: @WiringTheBrain Kevin's publications & talks: Mitchell, 2020 - Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are book Potter et al., 2022 - Naturalising Agent Causation paper Mitchell, 2023 - The origins of meaning – from pragmatic control signals to semantic representations preprint Mitchell, 2023 - Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will book Mitchell et al., 2023 - Robert Sapolsky vs Kevin Mitchell: The Biology of Free Will | Philosophical Trials #15 YouTube Mitchell, 2023 - Reflections on “Systems – the Science of Everything” Blog Other papers/books mentioned: Smolin et al., 2021 - The quantum mechanics of the present preprint Neuroscience and Philosophy Salon website My Twitter @akseli_ilmanen Email: akseli.ilmanen[at]gmail.com Brain Space Time Podcast, my blog, other stuff Music: Space News, License: Z62T4V3QWL Timestamps: - Intro - The Free Will skeptics - Quantum indeterminacy, the weather, and living systems - C. elegans and how evolution exploits noise - The arrow of time and the quantum mechanics of the present - 'How long' is the present for flies vs humans - Top-down causality on the biological implementation level - Meaning as functional (not epiphenomenal) and Robert Nozick's pleasure machine - Interdisciplinary science and education
- Oct 17, 20231h 43m
#6 Kate Jeffery: Grid cells in 3D, entropy & climate change
Kate Jeffery is the head of the school of psychology & neuroscience at the University of Glasgow (formerly at UCL). This episode is all about grid cells (background info), which Kate was already recording in the 1990s. We discuss how grid cells' rate maps differ when the rats climb in 3D spaces. Here we cover anything from cross-species comparisons (bats, birds), to self-organizing dynamics, and symmetry breaking. Kate also shares her (maybe unpopular) thoughts that the hexagonal grid regularity is not functional but a by-product. We also get physics-y by discussing entropy, evolution, complexity and how they link to memory and the arrow of time. At the end there is career advice and some thoughts on climate change. For Apple Podcast users, find books/papers links at: https://akseliilmanen.wixsite.com/home/post/pod06 Not familiar with place, grid or head direction cells? Here is my 5min primer. Kate's Website Kate's publications: Jeffery et al., 2015 - Neural encoding of large-scale three-dimensional space—properties and constraints paper Casali et al., 2019 - Altered neural odometry in the vertical dimension paper Jeffery et al., 2019 - On the Statistical Mechanics of Life: Schrödinger Revisited paper Jeffery et al., 2020 - Transitions in Brain Evolution: Space, Time and Entropy paper Grieves et al., 2021 - Irregular distribution of grid cell firing fields in rats exploring a 3D volumetric space paper Jeffery, 2022 - Symmetries and asymmetries in the neural encoding of 3D space paper Rae et al., 2022 - Climate crisis and ecological emergency: Why they concern (neuro)scientists, and what we can do paper Other reading mentioned: Cheng, 1986 - A purely geometric module in the rat's spatial representation paper My article on Michel Foucault and climate change deniers My Twitter @akseli_ilmanen Email: akseli.ilmanen[at]gmail.com The Embodied AI Podcast, my blog, other stuff Music: Space News, License: Z62T4V3QWL Timestamps: - Intro - Missing out on a Nobel Prize - Place cells & grid cells interactions - Grid cells and rats climbing in 3D - (Spatial) ecological niches of rats, bats and birds - Self-organizing dynamics - 'Speed' in navigating physical vs abstract spaces - 3D = 2D planes stitched together? - Symmetry breaking in - 'A purey geometric module' (Cheng, 1986) - Why are grid cells grid-like? - Kate's (grid cell) secrets - Entropy, evolution, and complexity - Memory as metastable states - Entropy, memory & the arrow of time - Career Advice - Climate change & sociology - New position in Glasgow
- Oct 10, 20231h 27m
#5 Bernstein conference 2023: Computational neuroscience posters
Two weeks ago, I visited the Bernstein conference in Berlin. I had lots of fun, particularly at the poster sessions, where I met William, Movitz, and Shervin. I met with each of them later and recorded the following conversations (on bark benches again^^). William Walker (Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, London) had a poster on 'Representations of State in Hippocampus Derive from a Principle of Conditional Independence'. We discuss how current deep learning struggles with generalization, lacks priors, and could benefit by learning latent conditionally independent representations (similar to place cells). Movitz Lenninger (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm) had a poster on 'Minimal decoding times for various shapes of tuning curves'. He was puzzled why neurons with periodic tuning curves (such as grid cells) are so rare in the brain considering their superior accuracy. He posits there may be a trade-off between accuracy and encoding time. Shervin Safavi (Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen) had a poster on linking efficient coding and criticality. We introduce those concepts and talk about why noise is a feature, not a bug. Shervin is also starting a new lab at TU Dresden, where he wants to understand the computational machinery of cognitive processes and he is looking for interdisciplinary-minded applicants! For Apple Podcast users, find books/papers links at: https://akseliilmanen.wixsite.com/home/post/pod05 Not familiar with place, grid and head direction cells? Here is my 5min primer. William's publications: Walker et al., 2023 - Unsupervised representation learning with recognition-parametrised probabilistic models preprint Walker et al., 2023 - Prediction under Latent Subgroup Shifts with High-Dimensional Observations preprint Movitz's LinkedIn Movitz's poster from another conference: Movitz's publications: Lenninger et al., 2022 - How short decoding times, stimulus dimensionality and spontaneous activity constrain the shape of tuning curves: A speed-accuracy trade-off preprint Lenninger et al., 2023 - Are single-peaked tuning curves tuned for speed rather than accuracy? paper Shervin's Website Twitter: @neuroprinciples For Shervin's new lab: interest mailing list Shervin's publications: Safavi et al., 2022 - Multistability, perceptual value, and internal foraging paper Safavi et al., 2023 - Signatures of criticality in efficient coding networks preprint Synchronization of metronomes video My Twitter @akseli_ilmanen Email: akseli.ilmanen[at]gmail.com The Embodied AI Podcast, my blog, other stuff Music: Space News, License: Z62T4V3QWL - Intro - William Walker - Movitz Lenninger - Shervin Safavi
- Oct 3, 202347 min
#4 Paul Middlebrooks: BrainInspired & Podcasting
An episode with my favourite podcast host, Paul Middlebrooks. Paul and I met in Berlin, and talked about his journey away from (and back into) academia and why he started his podcast BrainInspired. Yes, there is a lot of podcast meta-talk in this episode. For example, how science podcasts give you a glimpse into another field (as an outsider) and some advice for fellow podcast hosts. We also get into productivity, self-learning and some big-picture questions on what's holding neuroscience back. For Apple Podcast users, find books/papers links at: https://akseliilmanen.wixsite.com/akseli-ilmanen/post/pod04 Paul's Podcast BrainInspired His NeuroAI course with topics ranging from the history of ANNs to explaining variational autoencoders Twitter: @pgmid Epistimones podcast by Paco Chow and Megan Lee My Twitter @akseli_ilmanen Email: akseli.ilmanen[at]gmail.com Brain Space Time Podcast, my blog, other stuff Music: Space News, License: Z62T4V3QWL Timestamps: - Intro - Interesting conversations Paul had at the conference - The why and how of podcasting - Changing one's mind in science - Paul's NeuroAI course - Podcasts for self-learning & productivity fallacies - Podcast advice - Paul is back in academia - Neuroscience needs theory (beyond manifolds) - Saying thank you to Paul
- Sep 26, 20232h 12m
#3 ESI SyNC 2023: Bats, memory & interdisciplinary science
A couple of weeks ago, I visited the ESI SyNC 2023 conference in at the Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI) in Frankfurt, Germany. Their topic was "Linking hypotheses: where neuroscience, computation, and cognition meet". During the conference, I got talking to Yossi Yovel (Tel-Aviv University) about how different bat species navigate, what their vocalizations tell us about language evolution, and discussed his recent paper on whether we will ever be able to talk to animals. On the last point, I have some strong thoughts - thoughts including Wittgenstein and crows (see my own article here). I also chat with Francisco Garcia-Rosales (ESI) on his poster about oscillations in the bat auditory and frontal cortex, and how bats and marmosets are really good animal models for speech (and maybe language). Sarah Robins is a philosopher at Purdue University. Based of fMRI studies, many neuroscientists have grouped memory and imagination as a single phenomena. Sarah has been busy disentangling the two and we discuss how constructivist accounts of memory might have gone too far when abandoning memory traces. David Poeppel (ESI) has a lab on auditory cognition, music, speech and language and how they map to neurobiology. Yet, going beyond that David has some intriguing thoughts on what's missing in neuroscience more generally. We dig deep into why we need a theory of memory storage/retrieval ("engram renaissance") and how to do interdisciplinary science. For Apple Podcast users, find books/papers links at: https://akseliilmanen.wixsite.com/home/post/pod03 Yossi's Website Twitter: @YovelBatLab Yossi's talk available here in October-ish Mentioned books/papers: Genzel et al., 2018 - Neuroethology of bat navigation paper Yovel et al., 2023 - AI and the Doctor Dolittle challenge paper Amit et al., 2023 - Bat vocal sequences enhance contextual information independently of syllable order paper Khait et al., 2023 - Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative paper My article: Talking to a crow will be possible in 50 years Francisco's LinkedIn Twitter: @fgarciaro92 Mentioned books/papers: García-Rosales et al., 2023 - Oscillatory waveform shape and temporal spike correlations differ across bat frontal and auditory cortex preprint Sarah's Website Twitter: @SarahKRobins Sarah's talk available here in October-ish Mentioned books/papers: Robins, 2022 - Episodic memory is not for the future book chapter Ménager et al., 2022 - Modeling human memory phenomena in a hybrid event memory system paper Robins, 2023 - The 21st century engram paper Brigard, 2023 - Counterfactual Thinking paper David's Website Twitter: @davidpoeppel Mentioned: Gallistel, 2021 - The physical basis of memory paper Poeppel et al., 2022 - We don’t know how the brain stores anything, let alone words paper Recent <a href="https://youtu.be/pcEod3-o_pg?si=RFzYN_mWiVF
- Aug 18, 20232h 1m
#2 Saeedeh Sadeghi & Irena Arslanova: Heart and time perception
This episode, I talk to Saeedeh Sadeghi (Cornell University) and Irena Arslanova (Royal Holloway - London) about the heart and time perception. If you have ever been in a car accident, you might have felt as if time was slowing down. Some previous studies have tried to explain this phenomenon and argued that a state of 'arousal' may slow down time (subjectively). It's a bit more complicated than that. This year, Saeedeh and Irena published two papers showing how not average heart rate but heart dynamics on the sub-second scale influence time perception. Within a single cardiac cycle, time may contract and expand. We go in-depth on the methodology and findings of their papers and make links to interoception, predictive coding, meditation, breathing, psychoactive substances, and the many time perception theories out there. At the end, we also talk about science communication and their future research plans. Full show notes (with extra figures): https://akseliilmanen.wixsite.com/home/post/pod02 Timestamps: - Saeedeh's and Irena's background - Does 'arousal' slow down time? - Virtual Reality subway study - Orienting response in evolution and pregnancy - Phenomenology of orienting response vs meditation - Temporal bisection task & methodology - Heart anatomy, systole and diastole explained - Subjective time contracts and expands within each heartbeat - How sub-second heart dynamics interact with average heart rate - Oscillations & striatal beat frequency model - Individual differences in interoception and heart-rate variability - Heart-brain communication & the insula as an integrator - Question by Josh Goheen on how breathing modulates the heart - Psychoactive substances and slowing of breath - Neural time perception theories (Roseboom, Tsao, Buonomano) - Time tracking in retrospective and prospective memory - Science communication with the public & future directions - Outro Saeedeh Sadeghi Twitter: @SdSadeghi1 Website Wrinkles in subsecond time perception are synchronized to the heart (2023) Affective experience in a virtual crowd regulates perceived travel time (2022) Irena Arslanova Twitter: @irena_arslanova Website Perceived time expands and contracts within each heartbeat (2023) Seeing Through Each Other’s Hearts: Inferring Others’ Heart Rate as a Function of Own Heart Rate Perception and Perceived Social Intelligence (2022) Josh Goheen LinkedIn From Lung to Brain: Respiration Modulates Neural and Mental Activity (2023) My BSc dissertation: Graph-driven comparative phenomenology of altered time perception in over 20,000 trip reports URL Other books/papers mentioned: Marc Wittmann (2017): Felt Time: The Science of How We Experience Time book Claudia Hammond (2013): Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception book Craig, 2009: Emotional moments across time: a possible neural basis for time perception in the anterior insulas paper Sarigiannidis et al., 2020: Anxiety makes time pass quicker while fear has no effect paper Corcoran et al., 2023: Visceral afferent training in action paper Review paper on striatal beat frequency model (2016) Friston, 2018: Am I Self-
About Brain Space Time Podcast
Neuroscience is full of open questions. The most fundamental come down to space and time. What can place cells, grid cells and cognitive maps tell us about the evolutionary history from spatial navigation to abstract cognition? Do temporal dynamics between neural oscillations of different frequencies explain how information is structured in the brain? And are there species differences in how time is perceived? To find answers, or at least better questions, I am interviewing researchers in neuroscience, philosophy and physics.Twitter: https://twitter.com/akseli_ilmanen
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