Our journal club meets every Monday at 3pm at TATA Hall 3103 (NEW LOCATION)

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

Here is our current list of suggested papers. 

Spring 2024 Journal Club Meeting Schedule:


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 15th, 2024

Presenter: TBD

Paper: TBD


Date: Apr 22nd, 2024

Presenter: TBD

Paper: TBD


Date: Apr 29th, 2024

Presenter: TBD

Paper: TBD


Date: May 6th, 2024

Presenter: TBD

Paper: TBD


Date: May 13th, 2024

Presenter: TBD

Paper: TBD


Date: May 20th, 2024

Presenter: TBD

Paper: TBD


Date: May 27th, 2024

Presenter: TBD

Paper: TBD


Date: Jun 3rd, 2024

Presenter: TBD

Paper: TBD


Date: Jun 10th, 2024

Presenter: TBD

Paper: 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)

Paper: Rotational dynamics reduce interference between sensory and memory representations, Nat. Neurosci. (2021)


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)

Paper: Systematic errors in connectivity inferred from activity in strongly recurrent networks, Nat. Neurosci. (2020)


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)

Paper: Linking Connectivity, Dynamics, and Computations in Low-Rank Recurrent Neural Networks, Neuron (2018)


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

Paper: A comparison of neuronal population dynamics measured with calcium imaging and electrophysiology, PLOS Computational Biology (2020) 


Date: Oct 23rd, 2023

Presenter: Stella Yuan

Paper: Interacting spiral wave patterns underlie complex brain dynamics and are related to cognitive processing, Nat Hum Behav (2023)


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).