Tom Hartley

Tom Hartley

@tomhartley.me.uk

Former Academic. Neuroscience/Psychology. Starting a new company to make audio software and to produce and mix records. hartleydsp.com Interests: Programming, Recording and mixing music; The Beatles; currently learning to play drums. tomhartley.me.uk

1.2K followers1.5K following1.3K posts

Tom Hartley
@tomhartley.me.uk

This is fascinating. The high-level psychological/neuroscientific reasoning is somewhat independent of the low-level implementation but both serve to inspire/constraints one another...

Neil Burgess@neilburgess10.bsky.social

Great to see Ellie Spens’ model out! Interplay btwn episodic (hippo) & semantic (neocort’l) systems, in encoding, consolidatn, recall & problem solving with sequential info, as compressive retrieval-augmented generation. Inc gist-based distortion in stories & inference www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comHippocampo-neocortical interaction as compressive retrieval-augmented generation - Nature CommunicationsHere the authors model interactions between episodic and semantic memory as ‘retrieval-augmented generation’, explaining consolidation of structure from sequential experience, the reconstruction and d...
Tom Hartley
@tomhartley.me.uk

I haven't got to the end yet but it seems like a great way to apply developments in machine learning (transformers, LLMs and inspiration from RAG) to big questions in psychology and neuroscience (interacting memory systems).

Tom Hartley reposted

Neil Burgess
@neilburgess10.bsky.social

Great to see Ellie Spens’ model out! Interplay btwn episodic (hippo) & semantic (neocort’l) systems, in encoding, consolidatn, recall & problem solving with sequential info, as compressive retrieval-augmented generation. Inc gist-based distortion in stories & inference www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comHippocampo-neocortical interaction as compressive retrieval-augmented generation - Nature CommunicationsHere the authors model interactions between episodic and semantic memory as ‘retrieval-augmented generation’, explaining consolidation of structure from sequential experience, the reconstruction and d...
Tom Hartley
@tomhartley.me.uk

I had a cool idea for looking for this type of effect with a "localizer" by getting people to take a circular path in VR repeatedly. This moves gradually and predictably between the orange and blue paths seen in the lower part of D, so it might be quite a good way to map grid responsive regions.

Guglielmo Reggio@guglielmoreggio.bsky.social

Where does the six-fold grid signal (HexMod) in human fMRI come from? Our preprint points to firing rate adaptation in grid cells 🧵 1/7 Work with Misun Kim @zilong-ji.bsky.social Daniel Bush @caswell.bsky.social @neilburgess10.bsky.social, on bioRxiv: doi.org/10.64898/202...

Tom Hartley
@tomhartley.me.uk

I think I got as far as running this in fMRI. You need a task that demands continuous attention to allocentric location and probe trials. In my pilot the power was a bit low, but I think it worked. The idea was to see whether the phase of the grid might be topographically ordered.

Tom Hartley
@tomhartley.me.uk

In 1 out of <10 pilot participants, it was, or seemed to be, across a large swathe of retrosplenial/parietal cortex (while the biggest power, seen in more participants, was in medial temporal cortex).

Tom Hartley
@tomhartley.me.uk

It's sometimes good to dip into something you created a while ago and find you're happy with it. This is a throwaway song that we made three years ago to coincide with a school reunion, but it stands up quite nicely as a catchy pop song. soundcloud.com/c2-the-band/...

soundcloud.comWhen We Were FriendsC2 is a musical group of 3 friends living on 2 different continents and separated by 6000 miles. After 30 years apart from playing together, they are back in contact and making their own music again,
Tom Hartley
@tomhartley.me.uk

One of the annoying things about AI is the way it uses the word "honest" almost exclusively in the context of begrudging admissions of failure. AI text is becoming so common that it starts to twist the connotations of the word itself. Honesty used to be a virtue!

Tom Hartley reposted

Hugo Spiers
@hugospiers.bsky.social

Great article by first authors @laurenb29.bsky.social & Will de Cothi: Subicular spatial codes arise from predictive mapping www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comSubicular spatial codes arise from predictive mapping - Nature CommunicationsSubiculum, the primary output structure of the hippocampus, remains an enigmatic structure in spatial processing. Here the authors reimagine subicular spatial responses as emerging from behaviour and ...

Tom Hartley reposted

Philip Ball
@philipcball.bsky.social

Fair.

Nature@nature.com

BREAKING: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.” More to follow.

Tom Hartley reposted

Zilong Ji
@zilong-ji.bsky.social

Excited that our paper, “The limbic navigation system as a hierarchical RNN”, has been accepted at #NeurIPS! Joint work with two talented students, Huiwen Zhang, Krishna Gorantla, and @neilburgess10.bsky.social. We use a multi-module RNN to explore how the brain’s navigation circuits works.

Tom Hartley
@tomhartley.me.uk

Adding MacOS support to my reverb plugin. Exciting, expensive and daunting. On the plus side I got a beautiful new MacBook by far the best computer, I've ever had, the smallest and the most powerful, I think. There is a downside, too.

Tom Hartley reposted

Tom Stafford
@tomstafford.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy

👀 JOB: Chair in Psychology @ University of Liverpool https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSU859/chair-in-psychology-grade-10 Deadline: 30th Sept, full time, permanent "We are particularly seeking an individual with research expertise in neuroscience"

jobs.ac.ukChair in Psychology - Grade 10 at University of LiverpoolDiscover Chair in Psychology - Grade 10 jobs and more in higher education on jobs.ac.uk. Apply for further details on the top job board.

Tom Hartley reposted

Ben Hayden
@benhayden.bsky.social

New paper from the Neurosurgery Research Team at BCM! “Neural geometry in the human hippocampus enables generalization across spatial position and gaze” led by @assiachericoni.bsky.social! 🧵 www.cell.com/neuron/abstr...

cell.comNeural geometry in the human hippocampus enables generalization across spatial position and gazeChericoni et al. show that neurons in the human hippocampus track the positions of multiple agents in a simple pursuit-based video game. They identified place codes for each agent and for gaze. The co...

Tom Hartley reposted

Tom Hartley
@tomhartley.me.uk

Very quick instagram style demo of my new plugin. Headphones on for the full effect. #plugins #vst3 #mixing #musicproduction #audioplugins #audiotech #musictech #homestudio #audioengineer #audioengineering #cubase #studioone #reaper #fenderstudiopro

Tom Hartley
@tomhartley.me.uk

Very quick instagram style demo of my new plugin. Headphones on for the full effect. #plugins #vst3 #mixing #musicproduction #audioplugins #audiotech #musictech #homestudio #audioengineer #audioengineering #cubase #studioone #reaper #fenderstudiopro

Tom Hartley reposted

Ida Momennejad
@neuroai.bsky.social

📣Algorithmic Grammar of Flexible Cognition: A Walk through Latent Operations osf.io/preprints/ps... Flexible behavior moves adaptively btwn cognitive modes. But units of analysis remain representations & few operations. Proposal: formalize open-ended cognition as walk over latent operations 1/n

Tom Hartley
@tomhartley.me.uk

Another way to do this, is to do multiple low N pilot experiments with no intention to publish. Each yields very low confidence and great care is needed to ensure justified confidence accumulates rather than being diluted...

Mike Frank@mcxfrank.bsky.social

Data exploration is critical, but fitting your analysis to idiosyncrasies of your dataset can also increase the risk of spurious results. Ch 11 of Experimentology walks through why preregistration can be a helpful tool for balancing these competing concerns. 🧵 experimentology.io

Tom Hartley
@tomhartley.me.uk

... But the prize is greatly increases sensitivity to "serendipitous" discovery. In fact it's not merely serendipitous when you deliberately foster the circumstances to make new unanticipated observations. You "make your own luck"...

Tom Hartley
@tomhartley.me.uk

... These underpowered studies are destined for the file drawer, where I would argue they do little harm, and potentially save the cost of large N pre-registered studies with often predictable results. Great for hypothesis testing when you already have one, of course.

Tom Hartley
@tomhartley.me.uk

This is right IMO. The reason why we see increased diagnosis is because society (capitalism) is increasingly reliant on conformity, narrowing the range of what counts as "normal" - if you are sufficiently different, you are disabled. @drrobertchapman.bsky.social has written a book about it.

Marie Le Conte@youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com

really does feel, as an ideology, like to them there is A Norm, and you can either obey The Norm and be exactly like everyone else, or you can be A Freak and not be meaningfully welcome in society, and everyone should be trying their hardest to fit The Norm a sad view of the world!

Tom Hartley reposted

Marie Le Conte
@youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com

really does feel, as an ideology, like to them there is A Norm, and you can either obey The Norm and be exactly like everyone else, or you can be A Freak and not be meaningfully welcome in society, and everyone should be trying their hardest to fit The Norm a sad view of the world!

Philippa East (Author)@philippaeast.bsky.social

There seems to be a concerted effort right now to undermine the diagnosis/concept of ADHD and/or autism. It’s probably been going on for awhile, but I’ve really seen it take hold lately, and it’s really concerning. A lot of parallel to the undermining of gender identity and trans healthcare, too.

Tom Hartley
@tomhartley.me.uk

From the description this is the sort of data I would have loved to get my teeth into. Tempting even now I am retired.

Alana Darcher@alanadarcher.bsky.social

🎉 *extremely* excited to share our human single neuron + movie dataset is out in #ScientificData! 📄 Human neuron activity during an 83-minute movie from 2,286 neurons and 29 patients 🔗https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-026-07955-0 1st public dataset from @humansingleneuron.bsky.social!🧵

Tom Hartley
@tomhartley.me.uk

I admit I am starting to get nervous/excited about this. It's the hope that kills you.

Tom Hartley@tomhartley.me.uk

A little football (soccer) thread. When I was a kid I was quite into football, not fanatical but I went to a few games, watched on TV, followed Football Focus, Final Score and so on.