Jesseba Fernando

Check out the first in a 3-part series of posts explaining @guitchounts.bsky.social and I's latest paper exploring dynamics of transformers! Watching a transformer spin open.substack.com/pub/oftwomin...

I wrote an essay for @noemamag.com about AI consciousness, animal research, and the limits of what we can know about another mind. My argument: the lessons neuroscientists learned hunting for neural markers of consciousness in animals are exactly the ones we'll need as we start asking...

📢📢 Announcing this year's conference on the Mathematics of Neuroscience & AI (Rome, 9-12th June). We’ve got a stellar line-up and venue, and invite everyone to join: www.neuromonster.org

Renormalization in the brain? With @andreasantoro.bsky.social and @jesseba.bsky.social we're organizing a workshop at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social (Lisbon, March 16) on how coarse-graining principles from physics can explain neural computation across scales. nplresearch.github.io/neurorenorm2...

"'They’re spending more money than I would even tax them,' [Mamdani] said in an interview with MSNBC last week." This is the message. Make it clear that these billionaires aren't just worried about losing money. They're worried about losing the ability to exchange their money for power.

Already counting down till next year ⏳

Packed room at our satellite!!

On wednesday, @jesseba.bsky.social @marilyngatica.bsky.social with @nicopedre.bsky.social organize Cobrains kgatica.github.io/CCS2025-CoBr....

and then we double down with @jesseba.bsky.social talking about adaptive networks in a learn-relearning generalization task in rodents vs artificial networks (Biological networks #2, 2/9, with @scarpino.bsky.social).

“The idea that taking walks, reading things unrelated to your research, and hanging out with strangers in a campus pub should be considered part of the serious process of thinking, but might well meet with skepticism in practice.” www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

- did not measure people's creativity performance by any reputable creativity task or measure, just measured the ESSAY content (after giving people different instructions) - did not measure people's overall MEMORY ABILITY - false on "brain activity," DIFFERENT activity is not "weaker"

it’s even more demoralizing when the history you’re repeating is history you were around for the first time

www.nokings.org

This must have been what it felt like at the end of the first triumvirate. This is so cool, I love living through history.

Super, super excited to be here at the sixth annual conference on the Mathematics of Neuroscience and AI!

Hot takes/kind reminders a) “the bitter lesson”’s promise of scale did not deliver wrt AI reasoning & higher cog functions—O3 hallucinates 2x more than O1 b) prediction is not understanding, hallucinating is worse c) gen AI could help neuroAI but following latest AI trends is not a paradigm shift

This was so much fun!!!

I’m so excited to share our preprint on how brainstem neurons sense and integrate multiple body signals during food consumption. We imaged 1000s of neurons across the lateral parabrachial nucleus (LPBN) in behaving mice. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

m.youtube.com/watch?time_c...

I guess it’s homegrown crim of me to publicize my thoughts on Columbia rolling over so easily

Coinciding with it's "No" letter Harvard has refashioned its university homepage into essentially an advertisement for the social benefits of university research. This is the current front page.

We are rallying at noon at Cambridge Common for the leadership of the Harvard Corporation to stand up and stand with us as we defend higher education and democracy in the United States from an unprecedented attack.

Over 800 faculty have urged Harvard's leadership to "legally contest ... unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and university self-governance." The Cambridge City Council has called on it to "stand up in defense of the values that are fundamental to both the University and our democracy."

For the data nerds out there, here's a chart of the largest coordinated protests in U.S. history from my 2018 book HOW TO READ A PROTEST Today's "Hands Off" protests, in 1000+ locations around the country, rank as one of the very largest decentralized days of protests EVER.

If you’re upset about the chaos and corruption Trump is inflicting on your country—whether your focus is the nihilistic dismantling of government, the economy, our foreign relations, or his threats to the rule of law—please join the nationwide marches on April 5. Learn more here 👉 handsoff2025.com

If you are a faculty member at a US university, please consider signing this excellent petition asking our presidents, chancellors, etc to work together to defend our institutions from the direct attacks by Trump administration: sites.google.com/view/we-must...

I think some in the Senate have convinced themselves that the backlash to folding will be limited to “the left” and therefore ignorable. Those people are deeply and profoundly misreading the moment and the stakes. Virtually every swing district House Dem walked the plank to vote NO for a reason.

A small sample of populations served by NIH proposals that I personally know are stalled in review right now: kids with concussions, people with Alzheimer’s, caregivers of people with disabilities, adults ages 60+ Just keeping a record of who’s on the losing end of executive orders.

Six years later and this, from the editorial board of Nature (the single highest citation-indexed science periodical in the world) is sadly once again highly relevant. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

@jesseba.bsky.social from @nunetsi.bsky.social discussing joint work with @scarpino.bsky.social on network reps in a learn-relearning in mice vs artificial neural networks (while herself surviving music interference of a nearby Indian wedding :)). Literally context adaption live #netsci2025x

I said I wanted background music so I got what I asked for 😂

How do the neuronal dynamics in the mouse brain differ from those in a neural net when they learn the same association task? @jesseba.bsky.social (@nunetsi.bsky.social x @lordgrilo.bsky.social x me PhD student) presenting her amazing new work at #netscix2025!

NEW: 2024 has just been confirmed as the warmest year on record, and the first to breach the 1.5C threshold. We used a ridgeline (Joy Division inspired) chart to visualise daily temperature anomalies since 1940. 2024 clearly stands out with 100% of its days above 1.3C and 75% above 1.5C.

Talking about “going off the grid” and ramping up my Bluesky presence are the two wolves in me

worst Joy Division cover ever