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Blake Richards Profile picture
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11 Nov 20, 9 tweets, 5 min read
1/ We have a new lab website!

linclab.mila.quebec

There were a variety of reasons for the change, but the biggest ones were related to commitments we made as a lab during #ShutDownSTEM in June:



Specifically, we've made the following changes:
2/ We've created an online application form with clear instructions:

linclab.mila.quebec/opportunities

From now on, I will direct anyone who emails me to this form, which eliminates the "hidden curriculum" of how to write to a PI. Hopefully, this limits potential implicit bias from me.
3/ This application form also allows people to identify as being from an under-represented group, if they wish, which will help the lab to consider diversity more concretely when we're making recruitment decisions.
4/ We've added a clear statement of our lab's commitment to EDI in order to help ensure that potential applicants (or anyone else interested in reaching out to us) knows that we are working to be a welcoming place:

linclab.mila.quebec/edi
5/ And, we now have links to pdfs of all our papers on the site, so that people without institutional access can read them:

linclab.mila.quebec/publications
6/ Big shout outs and thanks to all the members of the lab who helped me with both the EDI plan and updating the website!

CC @colleenjgillon @MandanaSamiei @AntChen_ @RoyEyono @ShahabBakht @SlaSamiee @wagonspeedracer and others, who I'm having trouble finding on Twitter...
7/ I'll add as a final note: we've been working on the other items on our initial #ShutDownSTEM commitments as well, but this announcement was about the website, specifically. 🙂
PS - CC @arna_ghosh too!!! Sorry to have forgotten you on the list!
Ack, and @psurya1994 ! Sorry, it was the end of a long day when I tweeted this...

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More from @tyrell_turing

Blake Richards Profile picture
30 Jun 20
1/n) A small thread on argument structure... I've been thinking about this bc @TheFrontalLobe_ recently posted about Tim Van Gelder's famous paper, and I turned into a complete jerk in response (sorry again André). I was asking myself, why does that paper make me so irritable?
2/n) I realized why: it's the structure of the argument in the paper. I also realized that many other papers that get under my skin share the same structure. I need to learn to be less of a jerk on Twitter, yes, but I also want to highlight why this structure bothers me so.
3/n) Here's the structure I find so irritating:

1. Concept A is central to current theories of the brain/mind
2. Define A as implying X, Y, Z, claim concept B does not
3. Argue that X, Y, Z are surely not how brains/minds work
4. Conclude that we should abandon A in favour of B
Read 13 tweets
Blake Richards Profile picture
10 Jun 20
1/ For #ShutDownSTEM today, our lab put aside research and crafted some concrete ideas for what we can do to help reduce anti-black/indig. racism, and more broadly, increase diversity in STEM. Our focus was local, specific acts to the lab. I wanted to share what we came up with.
2/ (Item 1) we decided that we could alter the way in which members of the lab are selected, in order to reduce the potential influence of unconscious biases and barriers that could potentially keep BIPOC from getting into the lab.
3/ Currently, the process is informal: ppl email me, and if I am impressed, I have a Zoom meeting and/or they give a talk and meet the lab. I then ask the lab's opinions, and make a final decision.
Read 20 tweets
Blake Richards Profile picture
5 Apr 20
1/ Need a distraction from the pandemic? It's #tweeprint time!!!

I'm very excited to share here with you new work from myself, @NeuroNaud, @guerguiev, Alexandre Payeur, and @hisspikeness:

biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

We think our results are quite exciting, so let's go!
2/ Here, we are concerned with the credit assignment problem. How can feedback from higher-order areas inform plasticity in lower-order areas in order to ensure efficient and effective learning?
3/ Based on the LTP/LTD literature (e.g. jneurosci.org/content/26/41/…), we propose a "burst-dependent synaptic plasticity" rule (BDSP). It says, if there is a presynaptic eligibility trace, then:

- postsynaptic burst = LTP
- postsynaptic single spike = LTD
Read 34 tweets
Blake Richards Profile picture
27 Feb 20
1/ I want to very briefly address this article that came out today by @matthewcobb in the Guardian:

theguardian.com/science/2020/f…
2/ I'm tempted to ignore it, but I think that would actually be a shame, because in many ways, it's a good article. Yet, it is also a confused article, and I worry about it confusing both scientists and the public more broadly. So, I'll just quickly address the confusion.
3/ The mistake is a classic mistake. @matthewcobb is not the first to make it, and I know he will not be the last. It's this: to think that Von Neumann machines (like our laptops) are the only type of computer, and that their properties define computation. That is false.
Read 11 tweets
Blake Richards Profile picture
29 Nov 19
@GaryMarcus @r_chavarriaga @KordingLab @DeepMindAI You don't actually keep up with the neuroscience literature, do you? That has been evident in these conversations... Here, lemme give you a few examples:
@GaryMarcus @r_chavarriaga @KordingLab @DeepMindAI 1) ANNs optimised on relevant tasks match the representations in human (and primate) cortical areas better than other models developed to date:

journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/a…

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/a…
@GaryMarcus @r_chavarriaga @KordingLab @DeepMindAI 2) ANNs trained on motor tasks successfully predict both motor behaviour and the distribution of representations in motor cortex:

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

biorxiv.org/content/biorxi…
Read 7 tweets
Blake Richards Profile picture
28 Oct 19
1/ SciTwitter: I'm very excited to share our new Perspective article out in Nature Neuroscience today!

nature.com/articles/s4159…
2/ In this piece, we argue that neuroscience would benefit from adopting a framework that parallels the approach to designing intelligent systems used in deep learning.
3/ ANN researchers do not attempt to design specific computations by-hand, instead, they design three core components: (1) architectures, (2) objective functions (cost/loss), and (3) learning rules that provide good inductive biases for learning how to do specific computations.
Read 17 tweets

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