NeuroAI

Recent articles

Advances and insights on the intersection between neuroscience and artificial intelligence

Computer-generated illustration of a brain with a faint outline of another brain superimposed slightly above it.

Does the solution to building safe artificial intelligence lie in the brain?

Now is the time to decipher what makes the brain both flexible and dependable—and to apply those lessons to AI—before an unaligned agentic system wreaks havoc.

By Patrick Mineault
17 February 2025 | 6 min read

Dmitri Chklovskii outlines how single neurons may act as their own optimal feedback controllers

From logical gates to grandmother cells, neuroscientists have employed many metaphors to explain single neuron function. Chklovskii makes the case that neurons are actually trying to control how their outputs affect the rest of the brain.

By Paul Middlebrooks
12 February 2025 | 99 min listen

‘Digital humans’ in a virtual world

By combining large language models with modular cognitive control architecture, Robert Yang and his collaborators have built agents that are capable of grounded reasoning at a linguistic level. Striking collective behaviors have emerged.

By Kevin Mitchell
10 February 2025 | 51 min watch
Image of squirrels on a branch.

NeuroAI and the hidden complexity of agency

As we attempt to build autonomous artificial-intelligence systems, we're discovering that a capability we take for granted in animals may be much more complex than we imagined.

By Anthony Zador
5 February 2025 | 6 min read

David Robbe challenges conventional notions of time and memory

Inspired by his own behavioral neuroscience research and the philosophy of Henri Bergson, Robbe makes the case that we don't have clocks in our brains but instead perceive time by way of our interactions with the world.

By Paul Middlebrooks
29 January 2025 | 98 min listen
Computer-generated illustration of an hourglass encased in a larger piece of cracked glass.

The brain holds no exclusive rights on how to create intelligence

Many of the recent developments underlying the explosive success of artificial intelligence have diverged from using neuroscience as a source of inspiration—and the trend is likely to continue.

By Dean Buonomano
27 January 2025 | 7 min read

David Krakauer reflects on the foundations and future of complexity science

In his book “The Complex World,” Krakauer explores how complexity science developed, from its early roots to the four pillars that now define it—entropy, evolution, dynamics and computation.

By Paul Middlebrooks
14 January 2025 | 106 min listen

Eli Sennesh talks about bridging predictive coding and NeuroAI

Predictive coding is an enticing theory of brain function. Building on decades of models and experimental work, Eli Sennesh proposes a biologically plausible way our brain might implement it.

By Paul Middlebrooks
3 January 2025 | 98 min listen

Rajesh Rao reflects on predictive brains, neural interfaces and the future of human intelligence

Twenty-five years ago, Rajesh Rao proposed a seminal theory of how brains could implement predictive coding for perception. His modern version zeroes in on actions.

By Paul Middlebrooks
18 December 2024 | 97 min listen
Black-and-white image of cubes floating out of the bottom half of a human head.

Solving intelligence requires new research and funding models

Our research ecosystem isn't built to deliver the breakthroughs needed to understand intelligence at scale. We need a dedicated research institution to take up the task.

By David A. Markowitz
13 December 2024 | 6 min read

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Explore more from The Transmitter

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This paper changed my Life: Bill Newsome reflects on a quadrilogy of classic visual perception studies

The 1970s papers from Goldberg and Wurtz made ambitious mechanistic studies of higher brain functions seem feasible.

By Bill Newsome
21 February 2025 | 6 min read
Interconnected lines form a world map.

Science must step away from nationally managed infrastructure

Scientific data and independence are at risk. We need to work with community-driven services and university libraries to create new multi-country organizations that are resilient to political interference.

By Dan Goodman
20 February 2025 | 7 min read
Illustration of a woman holding a pencil over a map.

Familiar autism-linked genes emerge from first analysis of Latin American cohort

The findings, detailed in a January preprint, suggest autism’s fundamental biology is the same regardless of ancestry. But questions remain.

By Laura Dattaro
20 February 2025 | 5 min read