Athena Akrami
@AthenaAkrami
No longer here. Follow me @athenaakrami.bsky.social on Bluesky Neuroscientist at The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, UCL, in London.
Excited to see the final version out @eLife. A long journey since the 1st draft as we ran experiments to test new model's predictions. Thanks to reviewers whose comments made it a better paper! @vboboeva, A Pezzotta, @ClopathLab Image by @mulesome article: elifesciences.org/articles/86725…
New preprint (first from the lab)! 📢 "From recency to central tendency biases in working memory: a unifying attractor network model" by @vizhe4 (Vezha Boboeva), Alberto Pezzotta, co-supervised by me & @ClopathLab! @SWC_Neuro, @imperialcollege biorxiv.org/content/10.110… (1/25)
I couldn't get in touch w my parents (in Tehran) since yesterday, as there's a massive internet shutdown. Just now, via some news channel, saw a video of their street lit up under anti-aircraft guns. Watching war, where your loved ones live, from afar, is pure torture😞 #NoToWar
⚠️ Update: It has now been 24 hours since #Iran imposed a nationwide internet shutdown; the ongoing blackout incident is the most severe tracked since the November 2019 protests and impacts the public's ability to stay connected at a time when communications are vital ⏱️
This is like asking everyone in Los Angeles to get up and go when LAX is closed and not everyone has a car. Millions of people, an entire city, cannot leave at the drop of a hat. This is madness.
“Dear citizens, for your safety, we ask you to immediately leave the mentioned area in District 3 of Tehran” says the IDF Persian-language spokesman. While I was still on phone w my dad to see where they are, the attack started (less than 1.5hr after the notice). What a facade!
Anxiously thinking of my friends and colleagues in Israel and of course my friends and family in Iran. Minutes ago the Israeli military issued an evacuation order for Tehran's district 3 and it is likely under attack right now. This is where I grew up & went to school. Can't stop
An example of biased media these days, dehumanizing one side: Iran killing civilians (which of course is tragic) vs Israel hitting military sites. No, Iranian civilians have been killed in every Israeli attack since Friday (in hundreds so far). Don't rebrand it. #StopTheWar
Innovations by many in the history of AI. Shun-ichi Amari's important contributions shall not be forgotten. (I made this slide for a talk at @OISTedu a couple of weeks ago) theconversation.com/japanese-scien…
畳み込みニューラルネットワークの理論確立など現在のAI開発に繋がる研究は日本の人工知能研究者の貢献が大きいが、AIの歴史として言及されることが少ない（米国での研究を中心に語られることが多い）という話 theconversation.com/japanese-scien…
Huge congrats to @Karyna_mi for her paper published today in @ScienceMagazine! She found that the hippocampus is really important for a key strategy we use to make decisions called hidden state inference! 🧪 🧠science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… 1/7
Are you a clinical psychologist interested in computational modeling? The Niv lab will be looking for a postdoc in computational psychiatry/psychotherapy and we are especially keen on people with a clinical background. Email me with CV & research statement if this is you!
“Where was I again?” Our study published today nature.com/articles/s4158… reveals brain cells can form a coordinate system for our behaviours. Instead of locating where we are in the world, this coordinate system tells us “where we are” in a sequence of behaviours: 🧵below:
📢New work on hippocampal assemblies & theta! nature.com/articles/s4146… It was a pleasure to work with @AleksDomanski, Nadine, Tim, @kipp_freud, @DurstewitzLab, and Matt Jones (@SleepDetectives). @SantAnnaPisa @BristolNeurosci @zi_mannheim @BernsteinNeuro 🧵[1/11]
We are ever more closer to an Iranian-Israeli war which will be an unmitigated disaster, will lead to more innocent people dying and will likely not make any of us any safer. It can still be stopped. It must still be stopped.
The Ruediger Lab at @ucl is expanding, with a postdoc position available, & my colleague Dan Bendor at the IBN also has an exciting role opening up. Passionate about in vivo Ephys/2p-Imaging, mouse behavior & circuit interactions? Happy to chat about opportunities at SfN!
Thrilled to share the first preprint from the lab! We find that mouse V1 contains a three-dimensional map of visual space with different populations of neurons responding to near and far visual cues! Led by @yiran25_ with @populusalba9 and @ant_blot. biorxiv.org/content/10.110… 1/n
Finishing your PhD and interested in the Physics of Life? This is a reminder that we have several different postdoctoral opportunities. We coordinate, but best to apply to all that seem relevant. Please consider joining our lively and interactive community. Deadlines soon!
Hippocampus generates an internal model of Euclidean space. We ventured in a spatial odyssey exploring how much of the internal model is a priori, innate (Nature) and what is contributed by postnatal experience of Euclidean geometry (Nurture) Our answer@ nature.com/articles/s4146…👇
@erlichlab @omgauld and the Duan lab are hiring 3 research assistants! To contribute to training head-fixed and freely-moving mice in economic decision-making tasks and related recording/imaging/perturbation experiments and analyses. Come join us!
We’re hiring 3 Research Assistants! Join @erlichLab and @AnnDuan2 in groundbreaking research aimed at uncovering how neural population dynamics drive flexible and cognitive behaviours. Learn more and apply: sainsburywellcome.org/web/content/cu…
Congratulations to the SWC Emerging Neuroscientists Seminar Series 2024/25 winners! 🎉 Laura Grima (@HHMIJanelia) Daniel Levenstein (@McGillU) Chris Zimmerman (@Princeton) Noel Federman (@IBioBA_MPSP) Join us for their talks, starting Jan 2025 📅 sainsburywellcome.org/web/seminar/sw…
We are thrilled to release a new preprint on reinfections today! This paper details the impact of COVID-19 reinfections on both people with and without #LongCovid. Overall, the odds of Long COVID increase with reinfections. researchsquare.com/article/rs-490… 1/