Demetrio Ferro

Pokémon turns 30 — how the fictional pocket monsters shaped science The Japanese media sensation has inspired generations of researchers in fields as diverse as evolution, biodiversity and research integrity.

For Pokémon’s 30th anniversary, Nature spoke to scientists from around the world about how their work has been shaped by playing Pokémon games, watching animated TV series and films and trading cards in school playgrounds. 🧪

BAMB! 2026 | Barcelona Summer School for Advanced Modeling of Behavior Intensive training for experienced researchers in cognitive science, computational neuroscience and neuro-AI. Five interconnected modules, expert faculty, hands-on projects. July 12-23, 2026.

You're still in time to apply to BAMB! and learn the art of modeling behavior with us! 🧠

The deadline is this Friday, March 6th.

Run! 🏃‍♂️💨

Apply here:
🔗 www.bambschool.org

Green sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) was one of the studied shrubs and increased in biomass in warmed plots. Stock photo.

Climate change can flip some mountain ecosystems from grasslands to woodlands, according to a study in Colorado. Artificially warmed plots transitioned from mostly herbaceous plants to mostly woody shrubs over 29 years. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/vOGH50Yl7JC

Book cover of Dare to Think Differently: How Open-Mindedness Creates Exceptional Decision-Making by Gerald Zaltman

Gerald Zaltman's pioneering research methods for understanding the unconscious desires of customers are used by companies around the world. Dare to Think Differently draws on these groundbreaking methods to explain the innovative thinking used by successful executives

https://ow.ly/YfqL50Yiu19

As promised: a detailed figure-by-figure thread on our @pnas.org paper:

doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

We use signal correlations and noise correlations in chronic imaging data to show that representational drift is shaped by a balance between Hebbian and stochastic changes.

Let’s dive in 👇

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BAMB! 2026 | Barcelona Summer School for Advanced Modeling of Behavior Intensive training for experienced researchers in cognitive science, computational neuroscience and neuro-AI. Five interconnected modules, expert faculty, hands-on projects. July 12-23, 2026.

Applications for BAMB! 2026 are officially open!

Join us in Barcelona (July 12–23) to master the art of behavioral modeling with our incredible faculty:

@meganakpeters.bsky.social
@marcelomattar.bsky.social
@khamascience.bsky.social
@thecharleywu.bsky.social

Apply now here: www.bambschool.org

Rhythmic sampling of multiple decision alternatives in the human brain - Nature Communications How humans process competing information when making multi-alternative decisions remains unclear. Here, the authors show that the brain resolves the trade-off between “evaluating within” and “comparin...

Cognition is not steady state.
Rhythmic sampling of multiple decision alternatives in the human brain
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience

Marseille folks: I’m organizing a one-day workshop on Distributed Computations for Flexible Behavior (Apr 16, Timone Campus) with a great line-up of speakers bridging theory, circuits & whole-brain dynamics! 🧠

Free registration (mandatory, incl. lunch): fannycazettes.limesurvey.net/172448?lang=...

Increasing prevalence of AI adoption in science.

A study published in Nature analyses the impact of AI on scientific research, revealing that AI-augmented scientists publish 3.02 times more papers and receive 4.84 times more citations compared to their peers. go.nature.com/4rmyX2x 🧪 #ArtificialIntelligence

🚨Do we need a large, expensive MRI scanner to map whole-brain networks in the mouse? Not necessarily!

In our new preprint ▶️ tinyurl.com/3a2h4r9f
we show that transcranial functional ultrasound (fUSI) can map connectome-scale networks with striking agreement to fMRI
🧵👇

Turning Our Back on Clean Energy Why does MAGA hate the planet?

“Why does MAGA hate the planet?” open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

Quick reminder that 3 °C of warming would set Europe up for heat domes that kill 30,000 people in a single week. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Building compositional tasks with shared neural subspaces - Nature The brain can flexibly perform multiple tasks by compositionally combining task-relevant neural representations.

This is cool. Complex behavior is built from subcomponents.
Building compositional tasks with shared neural subspaces
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience

the cutoff scores for #MSCA postdoc fellowships are very high this year. has the score distribution shifted compared to previous years? I made a plot with scores from past years.

if scores are at ceiling level, the process becomes essentially a lottery, because minor issues can lead to deductions.

💡 Our new #preprint is available online!

How do people adapt their decisions when priorities change?
In our new study, we examine how the way people represent value shapes their ability to adjust in multi-goal environments.

🔗 OSF link: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

It's a thread 🧵

Prefrontal neural geometry of learned cues guides motivated behaviours - Nature The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex encodes the value, salience and valence of learned stimuli along distinct neural dimensions, and the geometry of these representations shapes motivated behaviours in ...

Can you easily distinguish between value, valence, and salience?

Probably not, but the prefrontal cortex of mice seems to achieve this by creating a sort of multidimensional orthogonal neural space, where each dimension corresponds to one of these subjective elements

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🌟 The #FENS–#EJN Image Competition is open!

This is your chance to showcase your creativity at #FENS2026 in #Barcelona! 🇪🇸

🗓️ Deadline: 28 February 2026
👉 Learn more and submit your image here: buff.ly/TPA5eoV

#FENS #BrainResearch #NeuroscienceConference

Cortex works with rhythms and waves.
Nested spatiotemporal theta–gamma waves organize hierarchical processing across the mouse visual cortex
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience

Extreme temperature events reshuffle the ecological landscape of the Southern Ocean - Nature Communications Satellite records reveal that Southern Ocean phytoplankton responds in contrasting ways to marine heatwaves and cold spells. These opposing impacts vary sharply by region, exposing distinct ecological...

New study uses #satellite records and shows that #SouthernOcean #phytoplankton responds in contrasting ways to marine #heatwaves and #cold spells. The impacts vary sharply by region, exposing distinct #ecological sensitivity to #climate -driven extremes. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨 #FENS2026 LAST DAY!

🗓️ 5 February is the final day for early registration, abstract submissions and travel grants for the #FENSForum.

Be part of Europe’s largest #neuroscience conference and connect with the global brain science community. 🧠

👉 buff.ly/psyzZje

www.sciencefocus.com/news/cow-too...
Tool use - when idiot humans land clear, what's a cow gotta do to keep preened, hey?
#sentience #philsci #animals #philsky #welfare #climate

🚨 #FENS2026 NEW DATES 🚨

First, Formula 1 sent us from Madrid to #Barcelona. Now the Tour de France Grand Départ has us switching gears again—we're updating our dates to 6-10 July 2026! 🗓️

Find out more 👉: https://loom.ly/zMkMKcA

🔔 Stay tuned!

Globally, no single day in 2025 was cooler than its 1991-2020 average.
climate.copernicus.eu/global-clima...

Why the global economic system should value life on our planet, not exploit it To preserve the natural world, economists should account for forests and wetlands as much as for factories and farms.

Book review 📚 Why the global economic system should value life on our planet, not exploit it

go.nature.com/4oj1dke

This 2017 preprint by @suryaganguli.bsky.social is foundational: the dimension of a neural code can't be > that of the experiment used to measure it. Yet it is not very widely known. Maybe because people don't like the message? And because it's "unpublished"? (After writing it, Gao left for SpaceX)

Part of a Lancet Infographic summarising the findings from the Lancet Series on Ultra-Processed Foods and Human Health.

Part of a Lancet Infographic summarising the findings from the Lancet Series on Ultra-Processed Foods and Human Health.

Part of a Lancet Infographic summarising the findings from the Lancet Series on Ultra-Processed Foods and Human Health.

Ultra-processed foods – what’s the impact?

In a new Lancet Series, experts warn a global rise in #UPFs presents a growing public health threat.

Read the evidence & policy recommendations ⬇️
spkl.io/63327AduhR

Universities should be more ambitious in the climate transition, according to The Young Academy - De Jonge Akademie News

Proud to share our manifesto - with a vision and concrete steps towards just sustainability transitions in Dutch academia!

With @rogierk.bsky.social, De Jonge Akademie, Green Young Academy

www.dejongeakademie.nl/en/news/3148...

Years ago I started the Green Young Academy with @sanlifaez.bsky.social & @anne-urai.bsky.social. Across meetings, zoom calls, pitches and even a meeting with the King, this grew into 2 projects launched today: A report on Universities' sustainability plans & a manifesto with sustainability pledges

Very proud to have launched our manifesto and report to make Dutch academia more sustainable - a moment to celebrate after two years of hard work with the Green Young Academy, DJA and many inspiring colleagues

dejongeakademie.nl/en/news/3148...