Xinyuan Yan
@xinyuanyan.bsky.social
postdoc. Neuroscience, Concept, NeuroAI
BE STILL AND KNOW
https://psywalkeryanxy.github.io/posts/science/
BE STILL AND KNOW
https://psywalkeryanxy.github.io/posts/science/
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
Our work recently online in Nature Neuroscience: a neural reason why we err more when juggling tasks nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02430-w 🧵
Switching between tasks for different goals is an important form of cognitive flexibility.
Switching between tasks for different goals is an important form of cognitive flexibility.
September 15, 2026 at 4:52 PM
Our work recently online in Nature Neuroscience: a neural reason why we err more when juggling tasks nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02430-w 🧵
Switching between tasks for different goals is an important form of cognitive flexibility.
Switching between tasks for different goals is an important form of cognitive flexibility.
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
check it out!
300 early-career neuroscientists commented on the future of the field in a new survey led by @neuromatch.bsky.social and @thetransmitter.bsky.social.
#neuroskyence
By Paige Miranda
www.thetransmitter.org/science-and-...
#neuroskyence
By Paige Miranda
www.thetransmitter.org/science-and-...
‘High risk, high reward’: How early-career neuroscientists view their future
The Transmitter and Neuromatch surveyed more than 300 early-career neuroscientists to better understand their unique challenges, career aspirations and support needs.
www.thetransmitter.org
September 15, 2026 at 7:20 PM
check it out!
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
How do keep a narrative active in our mind despite interruptions?
The default mode network can maintain a representation of an interrupted story over a delay, even when the delay is filled with a demanding task. This representation is strikingly transformed from the initial experience!
The default mode network can maintain a representation of an interrupted story over a delay, even when the delay is filled with a demanding task. This representation is strikingly transformed from the initial experience!
Cortical and Hippocampal Pathways to Mental Continuity
How do people preserve mental continuity when tasks are interrupted? One established pathway runs through the hippocampus, which stores snapshots of our mental context for later reinstatement. We prop...
www.biorxiv.org
September 15, 2026 at 6:16 PM
How do keep a narrative active in our mind despite interruptions?
The default mode network can maintain a representation of an interrupted story over a delay, even when the delay is filled with a demanding task. This representation is strikingly transformed from the initial experience!
The default mode network can maintain a representation of an interrupted story over a delay, even when the delay is filled with a demanding task. This representation is strikingly transformed from the initial experience!
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
A paper in Nature #Neuroscience describes a single brain implant that can simultaneously decode speech and gestures in people with paralysis. The findings represent a step towards brain–computer interfaces that enable more natural communication for people with paralysis. go.nature.com/4Ac8BVt 🧪
Simultaneous speech and gesture decoding for multimodal communication in paralysis - Nature Neuroscience
Brosler et al. develop a brain–computer interface that simultaneously decodes speech and gestures from a single cortical implant to animate a virtual avatar, providing a step toward more flexible communication for people with paralysis.
go.nature.com
September 14, 2026 at 10:27 PM
A paper in Nature #Neuroscience describes a single brain implant that can simultaneously decode speech and gestures in people with paralysis. The findings represent a step towards brain–computer interfaces that enable more natural communication for people with paralysis. go.nature.com/4Ac8BVt 🧪
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
Our new paper may be one of coolest studies I've ever done. We show that the structures of visual storytelling in comics aligns with the word order of the languages of the comic authors. Here's what we did... www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Syntactic headedness aligns with visual narrative structure
Recent research has highlighted how visual narrative sequences involve similar structures and processing as syntax in language, yet no work has asked …
www.sciencedirect.com
September 14, 2026 at 12:00 PM
Our new paper may be one of coolest studies I've ever done. We show that the structures of visual storytelling in comics aligns with the word order of the languages of the comic authors. Here's what we did... www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
Do non-human primates have theory of mind?
My new paper takes a new computational approach to this classic question.
We implemented verbal theories of primates' mental representations as computational models. These models completed classic visual perspective-taking tasks.
My new paper takes a new computational approach to this classic question.
We implemented verbal theories of primates' mental representations as computational models. These models completed classic visual perspective-taking tasks.
September 14, 2026 at 5:26 PM
Do non-human primates have theory of mind?
My new paper takes a new computational approach to this classic question.
We implemented verbal theories of primates' mental representations as computational models. These models completed classic visual perspective-taking tasks.
My new paper takes a new computational approach to this classic question.
We implemented verbal theories of primates' mental representations as computational models. These models completed classic visual perspective-taking tasks.
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
"I've benefitted in my own lab from having a diverse lab of coworkers."
Nobel Prize laureates Andrea Ghez and Carolyn Bertozzi speak about the importance of diversity.
Nobel Prize laureates Andrea Ghez and Carolyn Bertozzi speak about the importance of diversity.
September 13, 2026 at 3:21 PM
"I've benefitted in my own lab from having a diverse lab of coworkers."
Nobel Prize laureates Andrea Ghez and Carolyn Bertozzi speak about the importance of diversity.
Nobel Prize laureates Andrea Ghez and Carolyn Bertozzi speak about the importance of diversity.
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
Representational learning by optimization of neural manifolds in an olfactory memory network
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Representational learning by optimization of neural manifolds in an olfactory memory network - Nature Neuroscience
Using experiments and theory, the authors examine how olfactory memories are encoded in the zebrafish olfactory cortex. They find that experience reshapes the internal map of odor space, making releva...
www.nature.com
September 13, 2026 at 2:53 PM
Representational learning by optimization of neural manifolds in an olfactory memory network
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
Scientists seeking to make a dry academic paper more engaging often get by with a little help from the Beatles, according to a new study.
At least 3200 scientific publications refer to the Fab Four’s music—by far the most of any top-selling artist.
Learn more: https://scim.ag/4xOihE2
At least 3200 scientific publications refer to the Fab Four’s music—by far the most of any top-selling artist.
Learn more: https://scim.ag/4xOihE2
September 11, 2026 at 10:30 PM
Scientists seeking to make a dry academic paper more engaging often get by with a little help from the Beatles, according to a new study.
At least 3200 scientific publications refer to the Fab Four’s music—by far the most of any top-selling artist.
Learn more: https://scim.ag/4xOihE2
At least 3200 scientific publications refer to the Fab Four’s music—by far the most of any top-selling artist.
Learn more: https://scim.ag/4xOihE2
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
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...
www.cell.com/neuron/abstr...
Neural geometry in the human hippocampus enables generalization across spatial position and gaze
Chericoni 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...
www.cell.com
September 9, 2026 at 3:34 PM
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...
www.cell.com/neuron/abstr...
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
Terrific piece from @mattperich.bsky.social on how to think about the dimensionality of neural activity
Will be borrowing the excellent folding paper analogy…
www.thetransmitter.org/neural-dynam...
Will be borrowing the excellent folding paper analogy…
www.thetransmitter.org/neural-dynam...
Dimensionality—neuroscience’s red herring?
Placing too much emphasis on a specific interpretation of dimensionality may lead neuroscience down the wrong path.
www.thetransmitter.org
September 8, 2026 at 11:42 AM
Terrific piece from @mattperich.bsky.social on how to think about the dimensionality of neural activity
Will be borrowing the excellent folding paper analogy…
www.thetransmitter.org/neural-dynam...
Will be borrowing the excellent folding paper analogy…
www.thetransmitter.org/neural-dynam...
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
(1/2) The EEG Moments Dataset (EMD) is now public! EMD is a large-scale dataset of simultaneous EEG and eye-tracking recordings of 6 participants for 1,102 naturalistic 3-second videos (while maintaining central fixation), together with rich video metadata.
arxiv.org/abs/2608.28768
arxiv.org/abs/2608.28768
September 8, 2026 at 10:41 AM
(1/2) The EEG Moments Dataset (EMD) is now public! EMD is a large-scale dataset of simultaneous EEG and eye-tracking recordings of 6 participants for 1,102 naturalistic 3-second videos (while maintaining central fixation), together with rich video metadata.
arxiv.org/abs/2608.28768
arxiv.org/abs/2608.28768
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
Cool cool. Let’s not obsess about dimensionality. Good motto in a 1/f world!
I fear that placing too much emphasis on a specific interpretation of dimensionality, or treating dimensionality as an end-all quantification of some aspect of neural computation, may lead us down the wrong path, writes @mattperich.bsky.social.
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/neural-dynam...
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/neural-dynam...
Dimensionality—neuroscience’s red herring?
Placing too much emphasis on a specific interpretation of dimensionality may lead neuroscience down the wrong path.
www.thetransmitter.org
September 7, 2026 at 8:22 PM
Cool cool. Let’s not obsess about dimensionality. Good motto in a 1/f world!
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
New paper from our group :)
Inspired by retinal ganglion cell networks, we built an on-chip photonic lasing network that can rapidly learn to solve complex visual tasks, from classification to image segmentation, from scarce training data. Out in Science Advances @science.org
t.co/enRyRVgzlI
Inspired by retinal ganglion cell networks, we built an on-chip photonic lasing network that can rapidly learn to solve complex visual tasks, from classification to image segmentation, from scarce training data. Out in Science Advances @science.org
t.co/enRyRVgzlI
September 5, 2026 at 10:24 AM
New paper from our group :)
Inspired by retinal ganglion cell networks, we built an on-chip photonic lasing network that can rapidly learn to solve complex visual tasks, from classification to image segmentation, from scarce training data. Out in Science Advances @science.org
t.co/enRyRVgzlI
Inspired by retinal ganglion cell networks, we built an on-chip photonic lasing network that can rapidly learn to solve complex visual tasks, from classification to image segmentation, from scarce training data. Out in Science Advances @science.org
t.co/enRyRVgzlI
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
Brainwide Representation of Navigation
Enny recorded >20k neurons across forebrain and midbrain while mice navigated 1D VR. She found that every region encodes spatial position!
Hippocampal formation stands out only in uniformity of the representation. But visual cortex beats it in precision...
Enny recorded >20k neurons across forebrain and midbrain while mice navigated 1D VR. She found that every region encodes spatial position!
Hippocampal formation stands out only in uniformity of the representation. But visual cortex beats it in precision...
Textbook: tracking position during navigation is primarily the job of the hippocampus. Recent findings suggest a more complicated story.
Recording >20k neurons brainwide, we indeed find spatial representations in every region!
With @kenneth-harris.bsky.social and @carandinilab.net
Recording >20k neurons brainwide, we indeed find spatial representations in every region!
With @kenneth-harris.bsky.social and @carandinilab.net
September 4, 2026 at 4:17 PM
Brainwide Representation of Navigation
Enny recorded >20k neurons across forebrain and midbrain while mice navigated 1D VR. She found that every region encodes spatial position!
Hippocampal formation stands out only in uniformity of the representation. But visual cortex beats it in precision...
Enny recorded >20k neurons across forebrain and midbrain while mice navigated 1D VR. She found that every region encodes spatial position!
Hippocampal formation stands out only in uniformity of the representation. But visual cortex beats it in precision...
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
Early career PIs in brain, mind, & consciousness related disciplines! Check out this awesome opportunity
cifar.ca/next-generat...
I was a CIFAR BMC Global Scholar (GS) & am now a fellow. The GS program was a powerfully transformative experience & I enthusiastically recommend it! Ask me questions!
cifar.ca/next-generat...
I was a CIFAR BMC Global Scholar (GS) & am now a fellow. The GS program was a powerfully transformative experience & I enthusiastically recommend it! Ask me questions!
CIFAR Global Scholars Program - CIFAR
Support and training for the research leaders of tomorrow.
cifar.ca
September 4, 2026 at 12:17 PM
Early career PIs in brain, mind, & consciousness related disciplines! Check out this awesome opportunity
cifar.ca/next-generat...
I was a CIFAR BMC Global Scholar (GS) & am now a fellow. The GS program was a powerfully transformative experience & I enthusiastically recommend it! Ask me questions!
cifar.ca/next-generat...
I was a CIFAR BMC Global Scholar (GS) & am now a fellow. The GS program was a powerfully transformative experience & I enthusiastically recommend it! Ask me questions!
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
I’m very excited to share our new paper, led by the very talented Jack Bowler, a postdoc in the lab!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We all know that the way we learn something matters. But how does a training curriculum actually shape how the brain learns to solve a problem? a 🧵 1/N
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We all know that the way we learn something matters. But how does a training curriculum actually shape how the brain learns to solve a problem? a 🧵 1/N
Structured experience shapes strategy learning and neural dynamics in the medial entorhinal cortex - Nature Neuroscience
The authors use recurrent neural networks to predict how structured prior experience shapes neural dynamics as mice learn flexible timing strategies during complex context-dependent behavior.
www.nature.com
September 3, 2026 at 3:08 PM
I’m very excited to share our new paper, led by the very talented Jack Bowler, a postdoc in the lab!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We all know that the way we learn something matters. But how does a training curriculum actually shape how the brain learns to solve a problem? a 🧵 1/N
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We all know that the way we learn something matters. But how does a training curriculum actually shape how the brain learns to solve a problem? a 🧵 1/N
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
Speech production is fast, complicated, cool (when the right thing is said...) Covert speech is a nice trick to study this. If you like speech planning, forward models, efference copies, brains this work is (we hope) helpful to clarify the brain mechs.
#neuroskyence
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
#neuroskyence
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Temporally structured motor and auditory representations in covert syllable production | PNAS
Inner speaking—the deliberate generation of speech through covert production mechanisms—is
a common human experience. Current accounts propose that...
www.pnas.org
September 1, 2026 at 7:49 PM
Speech production is fast, complicated, cool (when the right thing is said...) Covert speech is a nice trick to study this. If you like speech planning, forward models, efference copies, brains this work is (we hope) helpful to clarify the brain mechs.
#neuroskyence
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
#neuroskyence
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
How attention simplifies mental representations for planning
How attention simplifies mental representations for planning
Spatial attention controls the information people become aware of and, in turn, incorporate into simplified perceptual representations for use in multi-step planning.
buff.ly
September 2, 2026 at 10:28 PM
How attention simplifies mental representations for planning
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
September 1, 2026 at 7:47 PM
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
Discovering, triaging and skimming papers before engaging deeply with the right ones has helped scientist Shea Andrews to stay on top of the literature.
go.nature.com/3UxZcY6
go.nature.com/3UxZcY6
My four-step workflow for reading scientific papers (without trying to read them all)
Discovering, triaging and skimming papers before engaging deeply with the right ones has helped Shea Andrews to stay on top of the literature.
go.nature.com
September 1, 2026 at 1:58 PM
Discovering, triaging and skimming papers before engaging deeply with the right ones has helped scientist Shea Andrews to stay on top of the literature.
go.nature.com/3UxZcY6
go.nature.com/3UxZcY6
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
Excellent new review from Sarah C Wooley and Jon Sakata
Neural mechanisms underlying the sensory and sensorimotor learning of birdsong
Communication is a natural social behavior that influences reproduction and survival; consequently, central questions in neuroethology involve discove…
www.sciencedirect.com
August 31, 2026 at 9:46 PM
Excellent new review from Sarah C Wooley and Jon Sakata
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
Advice for new PhD students: choose a mentor who is committed to your training, not just your project. The most important product of your PhD - even more important than the science - is YOU, a newly trained scientist.
August 30, 2026 at 11:08 PM
Advice for new PhD students: choose a mentor who is committed to your training, not just your project. The most important product of your PhD - even more important than the science - is YOU, a newly trained scientist.
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
To learn how brains compute, we need to experimentally adjudicate among competing computational hypotheses. How do we do this in the age of complex neural network models? New review paper: “Making models disagree to learn how brains compute” with
@talgolanneuro.bsky.social @heikoschuett.bsky.social
@talgolanneuro.bsky.social @heikoschuett.bsky.social
August 30, 2026 at 3:29 AM
To learn how brains compute, we need to experimentally adjudicate among competing computational hypotheses. How do we do this in the age of complex neural network models? New review paper: “Making models disagree to learn how brains compute” with
@talgolanneuro.bsky.social @heikoschuett.bsky.social
@talgolanneuro.bsky.social @heikoschuett.bsky.social
Reposted by Xinyuan Yan
1/5 Imagine taking an fMRI scan of the brain of a person viewing an image, and reconstructing what the person saw from the fMRI alone. That's Brain-IT. "This is state-of-the-art image decoding from fMRI," said Michal Irani (@weizmann.ac.il), at the Simons Institute.
August 31, 2026 at 10:35 AM
1/5 Imagine taking an fMRI scan of the brain of a person viewing an image, and reconstructing what the person saw from the fMRI alone. That's Brain-IT. "This is state-of-the-art image decoding from fMRI," said Michal Irani (@weizmann.ac.il), at the Simons Institute.