Our journal club meets every Monday at 1:30pm at Pacific Hall 3501
We meet to discuss a recent paper in neuroscience with a significant modeling or a data analysis component. We hope the journal club will help generate new ideas, foster new collaborations, and keep up-to-date with the literatures.
People interested in computational and theoretical neuroscience (undergraduates, master students, PhD students, post-docs, and faculty) are welcome to attend and are encouraged to present a paper. If you’d like to be added to the email list, visit our Google Group.
(Note: After sending the request for access to the Google Group, please send a reminder to Benjie Miao, the current organizer, via email bmiao@ucsd.edu. This will help ensure the request is processed in a timely manner, as the Google Group does not automatically send reminders upon receiving a request.)
Here is our current list of suggested papers.
Winter 2025 Journal Club Meeting Schedule:
Date: Jan 13th, 2024
Presenter: Benjie Miao (Aoi & Augustine Lab)
Paper: Xie, W., Wittig, J.H., Chapeton, J.I. et al. Neuronal sequences in population bursts encode information in human cortex. Nature (2024)
Date: Jan 20th, 2024
Presenter: N/A (Martin Luther King Jr. Day)
Paper: N/A
Date: Jan 27th, 2024
Presenter: Ji-An Li (Benna & Mattar Lab)
Paper: Dohare, S., Hernandez-Garcia, J.F., Lan, Q. et al. Loss of plasticity in deep continual learning. Nature (2024).
Date: Feb 3rd, 2024
Presenter: Jeremy Chung-Yueh Lin
Paper: Griffin, S., Khanna, P., Choi, H. et al. Ensemble reactivations during brief rest drive fast learning of sequences. Nature (2025).
Date: Feb 10th, 2024
Presenter: Chan Li
Paper: Biroli, G., Bonnaire, T., de Bortoli, V. et al. Dynamical regimes of diffusion models. Nat. Comm. (2024).
Date: Feb 17th, 2024
Presenter: N/A (University Holiday)
Paper: N/A
Date: Feb 24th, 2024
Presenter: Mingchen Yao (Sharpee Lab)
Paper: Noorman, M., Hulse, B.K., Jayaraman, V. et al. Maintaining and updating accurate internal representations of continuous variables with a handful of neurons. Nat Neurosci. (2024).
Date: Mar 3rd, 2024
Presenter: N/A
Paper: N/A
Date: Mar 10th, 2024
Presenter: Richard Gast (Kennedy Lab)
Paper: Genkin, M., Shenoy, K. V., Chandrasekaran, C., & Engel, T. A. The dynamics and geometry of choice in premotor cortex. bioRxiv (2023).
Date: Mar 17th, 2024, 2:30pm (Note unusual time)
COSYNE practice session I
Presenter: JC Gorman (Gertner Lab), Trevor Supan McPherson (Gertner Lab)
Date: Mar 24th, 2024
COSYNE practice session II
Presenter: TBD
Past journal club meetings:
Fall 2020:
Date: Nov. 16th, 2020
Presenter: Mikio Aoi
Paper: Stine et al., (2020). Differentiating between integration and non-integration strategies in perceptual decision making. Elife, 9, e55365
Date: Nov. 23, 2020
Presenter: Marcelo Mattar
Paper: Whittington, Muller, et al (2020). The Tolman-Eichenbaum Machine: Unifying Space and Relational Memory through Generalization in the Hippocampal Formation. Cell 183, 1–15
Date: Nov. 30, 2020
Presenter: Marcus Benna
Paper: Ori Maoz et al. Learning probabilistic neural representations with randomly connected circuits, PNAS(2020).
Date: Dec. 7, 2020
Presenter: Yonatan Aljadeff
Paper: Nayebi et al., (2020). Identifying Learning Rules From Neural Network Observables. NeurIPS
Date: Dec. 14, 2020
Presenter: Eran Mukamel
Paper: From deep learning to mechanistic understanding in neuroscience: the structure of retinal prediction (2019) NeurIPS
Winter 2021:
Date: Jan. 12, 2021
Presenter: Gal Mishne
Paper: Russo et al. (2020). Neural Trajectories in the Supplementary Motor Area and Motor Cortex Exhibit Distinct Geometries, Compatible with Different Classes of Computation. Neuron
Date: Jan. 26, 2021
Presenter: Bin Wang
Paper: Stringer et al., (2019) High-dimensional geometry of population responses in visual cortex, Nature
Date: Wednesday Feb 3, 2021 at 5pm (note unusual time)
Presenter: Bin Wang
Paper: Stringer et al., (2019) High-dimensional geometry of population responses in visual cortex, Nature - continued from last week
Date: Feb. 9, 2021
Presenter: Tim Sheehan
Paper: Ruff et al. (2020). Low rank mechanisms underlying flexible visual representations, PNAS
Date: Feb. 16, 2021
Pre-COSYNE poster session
Sign up if you want to do a practice run of you poster before COSYNE-21
Date: Mar. 2nd, 2021
Presenter: Leo Breston
Paper: Gao et al. (2017), A theory of multineuronal dimensionality, dynamics and measurement
Date: Mar. 16th, 2021
Presenter: David Kleinfeld
Paper: Robinson et al. (2020), Targeted activation of hippocampal place cells drives Memory-Guided spatial behavior
Spring 2021:
Date: March 29th 2021, 4pm
Topic: Launch of spring quarter journal club
Date: Monday April 5th, 5:30pm (note irregular time)
Presenter: Brad Theilman (joint with weekly seminar Journal club)
Paper: Kim et al. (2019), Generation of stable heading representations in diverse visual scenes
Date: Monday April 12th, 4pm
Presenter: Jennifer Jensen
Paper: 'Antagonism in olfactory receptor neurons and its implications for the perception of odor mixtures’, DOI: 10.7554/eLife.34958
Date: Monday April 19th, 4pm
Presenter: Homero Esmeraldo
Preprint: Hinton (2021), ‘How to represent part-whole hierarchies in a neural network’.
Date: Monday April 26th, 4pm
Presenter: Yuru Song
Paper: Fundamental law of memory recall. Physical Review Letters, 124(1), 018101. Naim, M., Katkov, M., Romani, S., & Tsodyks, M. (2020).
Date: Monday May 10th, 4pm
Presenter: Ji-An Li
Paper: Goal-Directed Decision Making with Spiking Neurons, https://www.jneurosci.org/content/36/5/1529, J. Friedrich and M. Lengyel (2016).
Date: Monday May 24th, 4pm
Presenter: Felix Taschbach
Paper: Genkin, M., Engel, T.A. Moving beyond generalization to accurate interpretation of flexible models. Nat Mach Intell 2, 674–683 (2020).
Spring 2023:
Date: April 3rd, 2023
Presenter: Bin Wang (Aljadeff Lab)
Paper: Extended Anderson Criticality in Heavy-Tailed Neural Networks, Phys. Rev. Lett. (2022).
Date: April 10th, 2023
Presenter: Stella Yuan (Aoi & Serences Lab)
Date: April 17th, 2023
Presenter: Dhruv Kohli (Mishne & Cloninger Lab)
Paper: Toroidal topology of population activity in grid cells, Nature, (2022)
Date: April 24th, 2023
Presenter: Ji-An Li (Benna & Mattar Lab)
Paper: Residual dynamics resolves recurrent contributions to neural computation, Nat. Neurosci. (2023)
Date: May 1st, 2023
Presenter: Pengcen Jiang (1st year HDSI; Rotating)
Date: May 8th, 2023
Presenter: Meg Robinson (Aoi Lab)
Paper: Movement is governed by rotational neural dynamics in spinal motor networks, Nat. Neurosci. (2022)
Date: May 15th, 2023
Presenter: Yusi Chen (Sejnowski Lab)
Date: June 5th, 2023
Presenter: Felix Taschbach (Benna & Tye Lab)
Paper: Learnable latent embeddings for joint behavioral and neural analysis, Nature (2023)
Date: June 12nd, 2023
Presenter: Johnny Jingze Li (Silva Lab)
Paper: Geometric constraints on human brain function, Nature (2023).
Fall 2023:
Date: Oct 2nd, 2023
Presenter: Teng Fei
Paper: High-resolution image reconstruction with latent diffusion models from human brain activity, bioRxiv
Date: Oct 9th, 2023
Presenter: Pengcen Jiang
Paper: Inferring learning rules from animal decision-making, NeurIPS (2020)
Date: Oct 16th, 2023
Presenter: Palka Puri
Date: Oct 23rd, 2023
Presenter: Stella Yuan
Date: Oct 30th, 2023
Presenter: Dyuthi Sristi
Paper: Multiregion neuronal activity: the forest and the trees, Nat Rev Neurosci (2022)
Date: Nov 6th, 2023
Presenter: Sowmya Manojna
Paper: Preserved neural population dynamics across animals performing similar behaviour, bioRxiv
Date: Nov 20th, 2023
Presenter: Benjie Miao
Paper: A Unified, Scalable Framework for Neural Population Decoding, NeurIPS (2023)
Winter 2024:
Date: Jan 22nd, 2024
Presenter: Stella Yuan (Aoi & Serences Lab)
Paper: Nguyen, N.D., Lutas, A., Amsalem, O. et al. Cortical reactivations predict future sensory responses. Nature (2024).
Date: Jan 29th, 2024
Presenter: Benjie Miao (Rotation Student)
Paper: Nogueira, R., Rodgers, C.C., Bruno, R.M. et al. The geometry of cortical representations of touch in rodents. Nature Neuroscience (2023).
Date: Feb 5th, 2024
Presenter: Mingchen Yao (Sharpee Lab)
Paper: Recanatesi, S., Farrell, M., Lajoie, G. et al. Predictive learning as a network mechanism for extracting low-dimensional latent space representations. Nature Communication (2021).
Date: Feb 12th, 2024
Presenter: Weiheng Qin (Sharpee Lab)
Paper: Kollmorgen, S., Hahnloser, R.H.R. & Mante, V. Nearest neighbours reveal fast and slow components of motor learning. Nature (2020).
Date: Mar 4th, 2024
Presenter: Shiva A. Lindi (Aljadeff Lab)
Paper: Gillett M, Pereira U, Brunel N. Characteristics of sequential activity in networks with temporally asymmetric Hebbian learning. PNAS (2020).
Date: Mar 11th, 2024
Presenter: Mikio Aoi
Paper: Yang JY, O'Connell TF, et al. Restructuring of olfactory representations in the fly brain around odor relationships in natural sources. bioRxiv (2023).
Date: Mar 18th, 2024
Presenter: Iulia Rusu (Rotation Student)
Paper: Van de Ven G M, Tolias A S. Three scenarios for continual learning. arXiv (2019).
Spring 2024:
Date: Apr 8th, 2024
Presenter: Ji-An Li (Benna & Mattar Lab)
Paper: Elia Turner, Omri Barak. The Simplicity Bias in Multi-Task RNNs: Shared Attractors, Reuse of Dynamics, and Geometric Representation. NeurIPS (2023).
Date: Apr 22nd, 2024
Presenter: Sowmya M Narasimha (Prof. Gal Mishne Lab)
Paper: Gerald M Pao, et. al. Experimentally testable whole brain manifolds that recapitulate behavior. Arxiv (2021).
Date: May 13th, 2024
Presenter: Weiheng Qin (Sharpee Lab)
Paper: Wang, H., Zhong, H., Dai, W. P., & Yu, Y. The Functional Role of Pinwheel Topology in the Primary Visual Cortex of High-Order Animals for Complex Natural Image Representation. bioRxiv (2024).
Date: Jun 3rd, 2024
Presenter: Stella Yuan (Aoi & Serences Lab)
Paper: Ratzon, A., Derdikman, D., & Barak, O. Representational drift as a result of implicit regularization. Elife (2024).
Date: Jun 10th, 2024
Presenter: Benjie Miao (Aoi & Augustine Lab)
Paper: Driscoll, L. N., Shenoy, K., & Sussillo, D. Flexible multitask computation in recurrent networks utilizes shared dynamical motifs. Nature Neuroscience (2024).
Fall 2024:
Date: Sep 30th, 2024
Presenter: Benjie Miao (Aoi & Augustine Lab)
Paper: Vinograd, A., Nair, A., Kim, J., Linderman, S. W., & Anderson, D. J. Causal evidence of a line attractor encoding an affective state. Nature (2024)
Date: Oct 14th, 2024
Presenter: Mingchen Yao (Sharpee Lab)
Paper: Chen G, Kang B, Lindsey J, Druckmann S, Li N. Modularity and robustness of frontal cortical networks. Cell (2023)
Date: Oct 21st, 2024
Presenter: Max Weinberg
Paper: Qingyang Wang, Albert Cardona, Marta Zlatic, Joshua Vogelstein, Carey Priebe. Why do we have so many excitatory neurons?. bioRxiv (2024)
Date: Nov 4th, 2024
Presenter: Max Weinberg
Paper: Costa, A. C., Ahamed, T., Jordan, D., & Stephens, G. J. A Markovian dynamics for Caenorhabditis elegans behavior across scales. PNAS (2024)
Date: Nov 18th, 2024
Presenter: Richard Gast (Kennedy Lab)
Paper: Gast, R., Solla, S. A., & Kennedy, A. Neural heterogeneity controls computations in spiking neural networks. PNAS (2024).
Date: Nov 25th, 2024
Presenter: Stella Yuan (Aoi & Augustine Lab)
Paper: Wang, Z., Di Tullio, R. W., Rooke, S., & Balasubramanian, V. Time makes space: Emergence of place fields in networks encoding temporally continuous sensory experiences. bioRxiv (2024).
Date: Dec 9th, 2024
Presenter: Shiva A. Lindi (Aljadeff Lab)
Paper: Kozachkov, L., Kastanenka, K. V., & Krotov, D. Building transformers from neurons and astrocytes. PNAS (2023).
Date: Dec 16th, 2024
Presenter: Keerthana Senthilnathan (First Year MSDS)
Paper: Benjamin, A.S., Zhang, LQ., Qiu, C. et al. Efficient neural codes naturally emerge through gradient descent learning. Nat Commun (2022).