Grace Lindsay Profile Banner
Grace Lindsay Profile
Grace Lindsay

@neurograce

18,008
Followers
1,345
Following
880
Media
11,461
Statuses

Asst Prof, Psych & Data Science @nyuniversity | Brains & Climate | Book: "Models of the Mind" | @neurograce .bsky.social &

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
6 years
I said I'd do it and I did. I got my thesis printed on a scarf.
Tweet media one
Tweet media two
1K
19K
97K
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
It's happening! My book, "Models of the Mind: How physics, engineering and mathematics have shaped our understanding of the brain", is coming out March 4th! More information on the book and how to get it worldwide here 👉
Tweet media one
67
299
2K
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
Have you heard the word "attention" thrown around in both neuroscience & machine learning? Have you wondered if/how its different uses relate to each other? My new review aims to summarize how this giant topic is studied & modeled across different domains!
Tweet media one
Tweet media two
Tweet media three
22
373
1K
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
🚨News!🚨 This September I will be joining @nyuniversity as an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Data Science! The position is split evenly between @NYUPsych and @NYUDataScience and is part of the Minds, Brains, & Machines Initiative ().
115
34
1K
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
I'm a professor!
Tweet media one
55
3
1K
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
6 years
(Thanks to @litographs !)
14
78
918
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
As I'm now on maternity leave and charged with looking after, IMHO, the best baby ever, I probably won't be Twittering much for a bit. But I couldn't go without sharing this...THE COVER OF MY BOOK!! Models of the Mind is coming Spring 2021!
Tweet media one
49
77
939
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
My blogpost on how & why we use convolutional neural networks as a model of the visual system is probably the most read thing I've ever written and it's now been expanded & updated into a proper review article, complete with 136 references & 5 new figures!
Tweet media one
Tweet media two
8
213
730
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
6 years
Guys...BIG news. I'm writing a book!!!!! It's called "Models of the Mind" & will be published by @sigmascience . The plan is for each chapter to explain (in an abundantly clear & entertaining way ofc) a fascinating example of how mathematics has helped us understand the brain.
40
53
692
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
The thing I have to remind myself repeatedly in research: an hour of thinking can save a week (or more) of work.
11
63
647
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
My first time seeing it in the wild! (Also my first time in a bookstore in a long time...)
Tweet media one
12
18
517
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
6 years
@AnneEUrai Text only. And a scarf fits about 30k words so I had to be choosey about which sections to include
7
29
417
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
The devil is in the details, and unfortunately the details are frequently not in the paper.
15
40
460
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
6 years
@synapticlee Haha I would love if this is what got people through a phd
3
15
378
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
6 years
This article is funny to me because it assumes Silicon Valley people have special knowledge about the effect of screen time, rather than viewing them as people who commonly take extreme actions in response to little or no scientific evidence.
11
121
419
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
Python notebooks are great for pedagogy but I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would use them for normal coding; yet, I see people do it. Am I missing something?
75
12
371
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
Why have I done this to myself?
Tweet media one
5
5
369
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
1 year
If you are thinking about gifts (for yourself or others) today, I know of a certain paperback book coming out next week --- and it's on sale 😉 "Models of the Mind: How physics, engineering, and mathematics have shaped our understanding of the brain"
Tweet media one
13
41
337
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
6 years
I'm a moment? ⚡️ “A new doctor printed part of her thesis on a scarf to celebrate”
23
46
303
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
5 years
Classic von Neumann: "You insist that there is something a machine cannot do. If you will tell me precisely what it is that a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do just that!"
13
53
284
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
New paper alert⚡️In this perspective, I provide an in-depth argument for the claim that we should test tools of neural analysis on artificial neural networks. This will help us be confident they can lead to progress on understanding the brain!
Tweet media one
16
70
317
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
6 years
@DavidBflower The defense was indeed successful!
6
0
270
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
11 months
"In 1998, a neuroscientist and a philosopher bet on whether we would find the neural basis of consciousness within 25 years. On June 23 at NYU’s Skirball Theater, that bet will be resolved."
Tweet media one
7
37
285
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
5 months
New paper "Grounding neuroscience in behavioral changes using artificial neural networks" This opinion piece shows how focusing on changes in brain state that cause behavior changes helps pinpoint neural mechanisms. Specifically, I show how ANN models in neuro & AI help with this
Tweet media one
3
66
301
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
Lindsay Lab is live! Got a website, a logo, and a lab github repo. Now just need to do some research...
Tweet media one
4
14
266
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
I can never get over how the popular press words ML findings. It's like they think there is a single unified AI that the company DeepMind is building and that that AI has now learned how to control fusion. No wonder people get scared of super powerful AI!
@arstechnica
Ars Technica
2 years
Google's DeepMind AI has been successfully trained to control a tokamak reactor.
12
47
173
10
21
246
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
Applying to grad school? Want to join my lab?? I'm accepting students through Psychology () or Data Science ()! For more info and possible project areas, see below or check out my website 👉
Tweet media one
Tweet media two
Tweet media three
6
94
251
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
🚨New paper on arXiv! In this work, we wanted to know how the visual system of a fully-embodied reinforcement learning agent compares to a network with the same architecture embedded in systems trained through supervised or unsupervised learning. More 👇🧵
Tweet media one
6
44
243
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
Starting grad school ~10 years ago, I blogged to work through the overflow of ideas & questions I had. Now at the start of my professorship I find myself in a similar position. So here is my first lab blog post --- on why my research includes climate
Tweet media one
12
20
237
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
This discrepancy.... it explains a lot.
Tweet media one
15
33
221
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
6 years
Ah, i found my original inspiration!
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
8 years
oh man, i may have to do this. prlly the only way people'll read it anyhow
0
8
64
4
18
190
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
My book comes out in the US/Canada/Australia in 5 days. Therefore....it's time for another countdown!
Tweet media one
6
18
220
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
6 years
A really nice article on what scientific theories are, why they're desirable/amazing, and what has happened in psychology due to a lack of them
3
68
191
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
1 year
I'm posting the lecture slides for my ongoing course on Machine Learning for Climate Change here <>, if you want to follow along or incorporate any material into your own teaching. Very much a work-in-progress though, so don't hold me liable for mistakes!
2
58
225
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
You go to hell
@social_brains
Matt Lieberman
2 years
The balls are all the same color
Tweet media one
17
105
528
4
8
213
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
Rainbow over Manhattan.
Tweet media one
3
4
211
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
11 months
I'm hiring a postdoc! If you'd like to work on a research project that fits into either of these two research areas () then send a CV, half page project proposal & contact info for 3 references to grace.lindsay @nyu .edu with subject "Postdoc Application"
Tweet media one
6
125
219
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
Interesting paper reflecting on the role dimensionality reduction is currently playing in neuroscience
Tweet media one
Tweet media two
3
29
208
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
Are you a computational neuroscientist? Do you have friends/family who despite their best efforts still have no idea what you do? This gifting season (which starts early this year due to global supply chain issues), consider giving Models of the Mind 😉
9
34
206
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
10 months
If you're starting to think about grad school, reminder that I will be looking for PhD students through the Cognition & Perception () & Data Science () programs. Research areas listed below and available here:
Tweet media one
Tweet media two
Tweet media three
2
78
214
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
5 years
It is pretty cool that you can throw in some extra sensory receptors (photoreceptors at least) and the brain will just figure out how to use them
Tweet media one
Tweet media two
Tweet media three
5
62
190
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
I believe that we are unlikely to understand the brain by simply looking directly at neural data, yet at the same time the more analysis steps that come between neural activity and a paper's conclusion, the less I believe it. Is this contradictory?
23
12
191
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
David Van Essen has a tie with his famous wiring diagram of the visual system on it and now *I* want a tie with his famous wiring diagram of the visual system on it. (I will start wearing ties for this)
Tweet media one
Tweet media two
4
18
188
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
5 years
Just typed "mortex" instead of "motor cortex" and I think we should all go with that now
4
10
180
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
I had never actually considered how to define a problem.
Tweet media one
4
19
179
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
Mathematical modeling as "disciplined dreaming", by Eve Marder
Tweet media one
5
48
178
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
Nobel prize-winning neuroscientist Lord Adrian was not at all terrifying.
Tweet media one
3
21
182
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
Who would've guessed that the next advance in neural recording technology would be announced via livestream by a black-masked billionaire with a pig pen in the background. I'm old enough to remember when we would just publish these things in Science.
Tweet media one
4
10
174
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
The emerging findings that untrained neural networks with the right architecture can perform fairly well (on tasks and on predicting brain data) are making me more interested in the details of the brain's structural connectivity.
@martin_schrimpf
Martin Schrimpf
4 years
Intrinsic architectural properties (like size and directionality) in some models already yield representational spaces that - without any training - reliably predict brain activity. These untrained scores predict scores after training. 11/
Tweet media one
1
8
47
10
24
181
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
6 years
@synapticlee I got the idea from someone else who posted theirs on Twitter & I wish I could remember who!
5
5
142
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
My paper on testing the tools of systems neuroscience on artificial neural networks has been plagiarized basically in full (after being run back and forth through Google translate a few time it seems 🤣) 🙄
Tweet media one
Tweet media two
10
16
177
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
5 years
NEW EPISODE! We delve into a modern form of the nature vs. nurture debate! Current AI approaches rely heavily on training from data, but many animals function well innately, with little exposure to the world. So how important is learning for intelligence?
Tweet media one
4
33
173
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
Computational neuroscience feels seen.
@AhmadTaha89
Ahmad طه
3 years
made a control theory meme that is very offensive
Tweet media one
10
68
417
1
23
171
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
Give me your best tips/resources for code management in a research lab (with the typical challenges: people w/o proper CS training working largely individually and frequently coming and going)
23
31
172
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
"Large-scale neural recordings call for new insights to link brain and behavior" - a perspective by @AnneEUrai , @BrentDoiron , @AndrewLeifer , and @anne_churchland
Tweet media one
3
41
173
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
5 years
Officially started as a Sainsbury Wellcome Centre/Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit Research Fellow this week!
5
3
169
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
New---and pretty substantially different from the textbook take---findings on split brain patients. The standard story always did seem a bit odd to me
Tweet media one
@leafs_s
CLaE
4 years
BRAIN Split brain: divided perception but undivided consciousness
2
34
75
3
52
162
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
Oh good god I need to comment my code before going on maternity leave.
3
1
163
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
Pro-tip: if your baby monitor needs some extra height, just write a book.
Tweet media one
6
3
166
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
Is there a review article summarizing all the forms of dimensionality reduction designed for/by neuroscientists? I've certainly seen a lot thrown out there, but I'd like them all gathered up.
13
21
165
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
8 months
@PatrickTBrown31 @Richvn I'm sorry, reviewer 1 very clearly raises the issue. While it was possible to get published without including these factors, it seems likely the reviewers would be *more* supportive of work that had in fact included them.
Tweet media one
12
16
169
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
"An Annotated Journey through Modern Visual Neuroscience" by Stuart Trenholm and Arjun Krishnaswamy goes through 25 landmark papers in the history of vision neuroscience, starting in the early 20th century
2
45
153
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
6 years
So thanks to @Doctor_PMS and @rakenworthy for the idea!
5
14
134
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
🚨 Paper Alert! Time for a proper #tweeprint of my recent biorxiv paper with Tom Mrsic-Flogel & Maneesh Sahani. We wanted to know: how do recurrent connections help the visual system process degraded images? 1/n
Tweet media one
@biorxiv_neursci
bioRxiv Neuroscience
2 years
Bio-inspired neural networks implement different recurrent visual processing strategies than task-trained ones do #biorxiv_neursci
1
8
37
3
39
156
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
Seems like a good time to learn about brain development. (And yes if you're wondering, it's been super fun being pregnant during a pandemic)
Tweet media one
11
6
149
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
Just watched the 1990 Total Recall, which is a movie that features self-driving cars, a Mars colony, neural implants, and a giant boring machine---and now I know where @elonmusk got all of his ideas.
5
5
153
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
Every bit of progress I've made in modeling has immediately felt obvious and simple after the fact. Even if I just spent weeks confused and struggling over it.
Tweet media one
6
21
150
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
TIL Wikipedia keeps a list of open neuroscience datasets. Pretty cool.
3
40
139
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
I have a new paper with Dan Rubin & @kendmil on biorxiv! "A simple circuit model of visual cortex explains neural and behavioral aspects of attention" We replicated findings (and figures) from several experimental papers, all using the same basic model!
1
38
145
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
I was surprised by all the confusion/pushback around this idea that data bias is causing a photo-enhancing algorithm to make people look more white. I think it was the result of people confusing an explanation of a specific type of bias for an explanation of bias in general. 1/n
@ylecun
Yann LeCun
4 years
There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about this recent tweet of mine ) where I try to explain the cause of the bias seen in this work on face super-resolution: Here is a long explanatory thread responding to @timnitGebru
15
37
371
8
12
135
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
I've recently decided to transform my twitter feed---through unfollows and muting of words and accounts---to be mostly politics- and cultural commentary-free. It already feels lighter and more engaging. It's something I'd recommend others considering if it sounds appealing. 1/n
8
2
133
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
I'm beginning to wonder if going to conferences just outside one's research area is a better strategy than focusing on very in-domain ones. 1/n
9
8
140
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
I like the Rao/Ballard predictive coding model as a theory because it makes clear experimental predictions about how the visual system should work. The flip side of that is we can find that those predictions aren't borne out, as shown here:
8
31
141
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
Write your papers as though a sleep-deprived mother of two children under two is trying to read them---because I am. And then they will be extra clear for everyone else 😁
2
4
134
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
Reading this paper by @KriegeskorteLab and @weixx2 for lab meeting & I wanna recommend it to anyone curious about the relationships between common words like tuning, representational geometry, manifold, information, decoding, etc. Very clearly written!
2
21
139
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
Does anyone know of a good argument against the claim "If we cant understand a neural net, we dont have much hope for understanding the brain"? ie the idea that if tools of systems neurosci are applied to ANNs & don't work well, then theyre probably not working well on the brain
68
18
133
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
I shared my hardback cover just after having my first kid, so only fitting for the paperback to be revealed while I start maternity leave with the second! "Models of the Mind", now in blue, coming fall 2022. Pre-order now at your fav bookseller!
Tweet media one
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
As I'm now on maternity leave and charged with looking after, IMHO, the best baby ever, I probably won't be Twittering much for a bit. But I couldn't go without sharing this...THE COVER OF MY BOOK!! Models of the Mind is coming Spring 2021!
Tweet media one
49
77
939
7
10
132
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
5 years
This was a way of visualizing the activity of deep nets in the 80s and I think I now know how it feels to be an archaeologist trying to interpret cave paintings.
Tweet media one
6
9
126
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
5 years
Presenting a poster at #CCN2019 this afternoon on how to incorporate biological details into deep nets. Certainly on the prettier side of posters I normally make...
Tweet media one
4
14
129
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
1 year
Vision transformers appear to rely less on high frequency info and can have higher robustness to adversarial attacks than CNNs for the same clean performance. Has anyone done explicit shape vs. texture-based processing work on transformers?
Tweet media one
Tweet media two
13
26
134
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
The queue for GPUs on the university cluster:
Tweet media one
1
7
122
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
Just tried to Ctrl+C on one computer and Ctrl+V on another. When will technology catch up with me!
11
0
124
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
The amount of excitement I feel as I embark on reading a well-written and relevant review article is almost embarrassing. It's like I'm all revved up to mainline some pure INFORMATION.
7
0
122
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
Ooo I just got that sad feeling when you realize you're gonna die before a lot of the big, interesting scientific questions are sorted out
Tweet media one
11
7
122
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
Does anyone else feel like when they scroll through titles in a table of contents or conference schedule that they're not really *reading* them? It's more like a semi-conscious bag-of-words model where if enough words are associated with "interesting" in my mind, I pause.
5
1
120
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
Saw my book index for the first time! It's like seeing two years of my life flash before my eyes in a big word salad
Tweet media one
9
0
122
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
6 years
Well this is super helpful: "Dynamical systems, attractors, and neural circuits" - a review of how dynamical systems theory is applied in neuroscience by Paul Miller
2
52
113
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
For those interested in history of neuroscience, Charles Gross (who died last year) was a neuroscientist who wrote a lot of history. His work has been very helpful in my book research & I just came across his book of essays, which may be of interest:
Tweet media one
7
18
123
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
5 years
NEW EPISODE! We talk about the (ideally) synergistic relationship between deep learning & neuroscience! How has the infiltration of deep nets reframed old questions in neuroscience? What tools can be used to understand both? What has been learned already?
Tweet media one
3
37
111
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
My apartment building celebrates all three major holiday seasons: Christmas, Hanukkah, and Covid.
Tweet media one
2
3
115
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
6 years
If you consider yourself a scientist of some stature, please write an autobiography. And write it towards the end of your career, when your inhibitions are down. And fill it with gossip & funny tales & revealing quotes. Sincerely, someone trying to spice up a book about science
5
7
108
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
7 years
Was that not the focus of every issue, Neuron?
Tweet media one
3
19
109
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
4 years
Guys, I know we like to joke around on this site and all, but I just have to say, in all seriousness... ....moving a picture in Microsoft Word is really hard.
7
3
108
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
2 years
There's a sense that peer reviewers have an antagonistic relationship with authors, relentlessly trying to prove a paper is no good. I don't feel this way. As a reviewer, I love when people write good papers; makes my job easier. Please, write good papers---and I'll say you did!
6
3
116
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
If you completed the @neuromatch academy computational neuroscience course (as a student or TA), send me a screenshot of the title slide of your project presentation and I'll send you a 20% discount code for my book "Models of the Mind"
@iworeushankaonc
Arslan Gabdulkhakov
3 years
I realized that it was very timely to start reading this wonderful book by @neurograce during the @neuromatch CN course. It provides a historical overview of many, if not all the concepts covered in the CN course and thus it allowed me…
1
1
19
4
29
119
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
1 year
Paperbacks: just like hard covers except cheaper and with fewer errors. Get Models of the Mind, out in paperback today!
Tweet media one
3
16
117
@neurograce
Grace Lindsay
3 years
Maybe I'm missing something, but it is hard for me to not see the decision to call certain forms of neural correlations "connectivity" as a mistake that impacts both communication and thinking.
14
7
107