Leading the Cognition, Computation, and Consciousness Lab at Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN
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The Tsao lab just showed the monkey brain flickers 📷~15x/sec between what it sees and what it suppresses, with the stimulus unchanged.
Our new preprint finds a human cousin: same sound, different percept, different brain state, set by the eyes
biorxiv.org/content/10.64898…
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André M. Bastos retweeted
@AllenInstitute OpenScope is undergoing a big transformation to become the Global Brain Observatory.
Brain-wide recordings shared with the entire world. Large, public experimental projects for the big neuroscience questions of our time. We are hiring.
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Put it all together and a theme emerges: perception isn't fixed by the input. The brain's moment-to-moment state decides how input is routed and experienced.
Our bet: theta, beta and gamma are the routing controls, from local sensory/auditory errors up to frontal cortex.
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Led by Jadyn Collado (her Vanderbilt undergrad honors thesis!), with Hamed Nejat [@HNyXJ ], Vibhangini Wasade, William Stacey & fellow senior co-author David Brang [@DavidJBrang ], with thanks to the patients who made it possible
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Following up this, a new preprint from my lab finds a human cousin with iEEG recordings: when an identical sound is presented but creates a different percept due to expectation, we see a rhythmic interplay of brain wave activity reflecting the mismatch:
biorxiv.org/content/10.64898…
1/ We discovered something totally unexpected about the neural structure of consciousness that overturns decades of thinking on its biological basis and brings us significantly closer to the recipe for generating conscious awareness.
New preprint: biorxiv.org/content/10.64898… (led by @HesseJanis, with @FrankLanfranchi, @_conor_mcgrory, @Yuelin_Shi, and @EngelTatiana)
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André M. Bastos retweeted
AI-written DNA now targets single neuron types in the living mouse brain. 🧠 Evo 2, given <100 examples, designed enhancers labeling layer 5 neurons with up to 95% specificity (preprint).
Next: where else in the body do they switch on? 👇🏻
arcinstitute.org/news/evo-2-…
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Using only the monkeys’ neural activity, Tsao’s team managed to reconstruct not only images that the animals were consciously seeing, but also images that were in front of their eyes but escaped their awareness
go.nature.com/4sqsmVW
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André M. Bastos retweeted
We are offering 10,000 scientists the highest usage tier in Google Antigravity free of charge for 6 months. Please apply! forms.gle/WvmBbPvRbpKG1BPn9
Gemini 4 Argon is now globally available.
Built to solve your hardest problems from start to finish, the model brings frontier capabilities across coding, enterprise workflows, and cyber defense.
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André M. Bastos retweeted
Come join us for the second Neuro for AI and AI for Neuro workshop. Looking forward to seeing YOUR paper submission.
We’re excited to announce the 2nd International Workshop on Neuro for AI & AI for Neuro, taking place Feb 22–23, 2027, in Montreal 🇨🇦 alongside @RealAAAI 2027! 🎉
📢 Call for Papers is now open!
For more info and submission details: neuroai-multimodal-workshop.…
#NeuroAI #AAAI2027
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André M. Bastos retweeted
Computation through morphology. Neuronal morphology is key to how brain microcircuits compute: dendrites shape input integration, while axonal arbors determine who connects to whom and where. These architectures organize excitation, inhibition and information flow. #Neuroscience
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André M. Bastos retweeted
Meet the dark guardians of movement: dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra. Identified by Annica Dahlström, Kjell Fuxe and team in 1964, they supply dopamine to the striatum, helping us move smoothly. Their degeneration is a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease.
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André M. Bastos retweeted
Giants in the insula! Von Economo neurons stand tall with their large, spindle-shaped bodies. Described by Constantin von Economo in 1926, these layer V cells also inhabit anterior cingulate cortex. Their role in emotion and social cognition remains an intriguing mystery.
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André M. Bastos retweeted
A spider neuron that stutters inhibition in cortical layer I. The neurogliaform cell weaves a dense axonal web around pyramidal cells dendrites, spreading GABAergic inhibition through its local circuit. In 1895 Cajal described this tiny cortical inhibitory cell. Amazing 👇
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André M. Bastos retweeted
holy shit
i asked claude to make a video on western civiization
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5/ This was a huge effort:
@VanderbiltU: @jake_westerberg, @SophyXiong, @HNyXJ (BastosLab) recorded the NHP data.
@AllenInstitute: OpenScope recorded the mouse data.
@EliSennesh joined in analyzing this cross-species data.
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9/ Now comes the future: w new NIH R01 funding, we’re scaling from 128-channel probes toward 512–1,024+ channels (with @DiagBiochips)
Cortex + thalamus + basal ganglia + hippocampus.
The goal: watch predictions and prediction errors unfold across the distributed circuit.
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10/ And we’re hiring a postdoc at Vanderbilt to help build and use this next generation of large-scale NHP neurophysiology.
If this sounds like the kind of neuroscience you want to do, take a look:
vanderbilt.edu/postdoc/prosp…
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