OsciPod

This study reveals the neural circuit by which the medial prefrontal cortex drives contingency degradation — the process of unlearning a cue-reward association that is no longer valid. A new computational model, the meta-reward prediction error model... more

Hippocampal ripples — brief, high-frequency electrical bursts lasting under 200 milliseconds — do more than consolidate memories during sleep; they actively update the medial prefrontal cortex's relational code during live planning. Recording intracr... more

A new study in Science reveals that the apical tuft dendrites of layer 5 pyramidal neurons in the mouse motor cortex are specifically required for relearning complex behavioral rules, but not for executing already-learned behaviors or learning simple... more

When thousands of neurons fire together, their collective activity traces a low-dimensional surface called a neural manifold — but does that surface reveal how the neurons are wired? This episode explores a theoretical study showing that the manifold... more

This episode explores how a star-shaped network of phase oscillators, whose synaptic weights evolve through a plasticity rule based on phase differences, can settle into exactly 2^N distinct stable configurations, where N is the number of leaf nodes.... more

A team at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing Normal University built a single glass micropipette device that spontaneously fires neuron-like electrical spikes using only ion flow and surface chemistry — no transistors required. The device us... more

How does the brain switch between the synchronized rhythms of sleep and the scattered activity of waking? Kuroki and Mizuseki introduce the EI-Kuramoto model, which divides neural oscillators into excitatory (attractive) and inhibitory (repulsive) po... more

How does the brain stay stable through aging, learning, and injury? This episode explores a computational model showing that inhibitory synaptic plasticity — a self-adjusting rule that strengthens local braking whenever excitation runs too high — can... more