Sneak peek at our upcoming @MITPress Open Access volume, Embodied Intelligence, co-edited with Jennifer M. B. Fugate, Arsen Abdulali, and Josie Hughes (June 2026). This book represents a major transdisciplinary effort to rethink the boundaries of cognition and agency. Preview the Open Access volume here: mitpress.mit.edu/97802620534… #EmbodiedIntelligence #CognitiveScience #ArtificialIntelligence #MITPress

Non-Drug Breakthrough for Postpartum Depression ! 🧠 A breakthrough for maternal mental health! A new nationwide clinical trial led by CU Boulder and Mass General Hospital published in The Lancet reveals that the free digital mindfulness program "Mindful Mood Balance for Moms" (MMB for Moms) reduced postpartum depression relapse by 26% up to six months postpartum. By integrating Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) principles, this accessible, non-pharmacological platform helps bridge critical access barriers, offering much-needed support for everyday anxiety and maternal stress without the hurdles of cost or geography! 🌸✨ #PostpartumDepression #MentalHealth #Psychology #Neuroscience #Mindfulness #MaternalHealth #CUBoulder #MassGeneral #PublicHealth neurosciencenews.com/non-dru… @NeuroscienceNew

🧠 Conversational AI is cracking the neuroimaging bottleneck! Led by Lehigh University with a $2.8M NIH grant, researchers are developing UniBrain—an all-in-one AI platform unifying raw preprocessing, multimodal integration, and biomarker discovery. Paired with a conversational agentic interface, it transforms MRI scans into diagnostic biomarkers in minutes instead of months! 🤖✨ #Neuroscience #Neurology #ArtificialIntelligence #ConversationalAI #AgenticAI #Neuroimaging #DigitalHealth #NIH neurosciencenews.com/convers… @NeuroscienceNew

⚡ Train the tissue, not just the machine! A massive step forward for embodied intelligence and bio-hybrid computing. 🧠🤖 New bioRxiv research from @drmichaellevin @WesleyPClawson and team at the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts, Harvard, and Google introduces HAL (Holistic Agential Learning)—an open-source closed-loop platform showing that dissociated rat cortical cultures can learn to control where network bursts originate through minimal reinforcement. Key takeaways: 🔹 Spatial Plasticity: Burst initiation zones shift toward the goal side over days, while propagation directions are preserved. 🔹 Error Recovery: Trained networks get better at recovering from incorrect states rather than just falling into them less often. 🔹 Consolidation: Performance gains accrue across days rather than just within sessions! doi.org/10.64898/2026.10.15.… #Neuroscience #ClosedLoop #EmbodiedCognition #Bioengineering #ActiveInference #NeuroAI #OpenScience #DrMichaelLevin @drmichaellevin

🧠 Unlike AI, the brain has no external designer! New research from MIT's McGovern Institute reveals that artificial neural networks can build their own learning machinery using simple local rules (like "neurons that fire together, wire together") instead of engineered back-propagation. By utilizing self-assembling motifs, these randomly connected units successfully organize into functional circuits capable of image classification and pattern recognition matching conventionally trained models—marking a major leap toward biological plausibility in AI and understanding brain plasticity! 🤖✨ news.mit.edu/2026/how-artifi… #Neuroscience #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning #ComputationalNeuroscience #BrainPlasticity #MIT #PNAS #NeuroAI

Neural chip decodes interactions between brain regions! What if brain stimulation could respond to how brain regions communicate in real time? EPFL’s LogSync neural chip decodes network-level signals linked to cognitive and emotional states, paving the way for more adaptive, targeted neurotechnology. The future is networked! actu.epfl.ch/news/neural-chi… #Neuroscience #Neurotechnology #BrainComputerInterface #ActiveInference #AI #MentalHealth #EmbodiedCognition #EPF

Merck/Moderna cancer vaccine cuts melanoma death or recurrence risk by 42%, shares fall reuters.com/legal/litigation…

Why are zebrafish replacing rodents in research? 🐟 With ~70% genetic similarities with humans and optical transparency during embryonic stages, Danio rerio bridges fundamental biology and precision medicine. From CRISPR-enabled disease modeling to real-time in vivo imaging, discover why this vertebrate model is transforming translational research. 🧬✨ pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/article… #Zebrafish #BiomedicalResearch #PrecisionMedicine #CRISPR #ModelOrganisms #TranslationalScience

Surgical stitching is getting a major upgrade. 🩹✨ Inspired by nature, MIT spinout SanaHeal has developed a biocompatible bioadhesive that sticks instantly to wet tissues, forming air- and fluid-tight seals. Think of it like a Post-it note for surgery—minimizing invasiveness, preventing leaks, and streamlining everything from heart bypasses to trauma care. news.mit.edu/2026/sanaheal-m… #BiomedicalEngineering #MedTech #Innovation #MIT #SurgicalTech #Biomaterials #HealthTech

Rewriting the rules of immunotherapy. 🧬✨ MIT engineers have developed an in vivo approach using lipid nanoparticles to program natural killer (NK) cells directly inside the body. By delivering mRNA encoding targeted CAR constructs, this method bypasses complex ex vivo manufacturing—successfully eliminating tumors and healing autoimmune hepatitis in models.A massive leap forward for treating cancer and T cell disorders! : news.mit.edu/2026/reprogramm… #InVivo #nanoparticles #Immunotherapy #Nanomedicine #Biotech #MIT #CancerResearch #Bioengineering #CellTherapy #Nanotechnology #Tumors #RegenerativeMedicine

Using brain imaging to study the spinal cord! For 400 years, we’ve used telescopes to look up. Now, sharpening faint fMRI signals is letting us look within. For 8 years, researchers told Nawal Kinany she was wasting her time. "The spinal cord is a tube. Why do you want to look at that?" But evidence now proves the cord isn't just a passive message cable—it performs neural processing of its own. Unlocking this hidden railway is paving the way for breakthrough treatments in paralysis and stroke. actu.epfl.ch/news/using-brai… #Neuroscience #EPFL #NeuroRestore #fMRI #SpinalCord #NeuroTech #ActiveInference #SpinalCord #EmbodiedCognition #MedicalInnovation #Medicine

My recent book AI and Consciousness: A Skeptical Overview is free online today and tomorrow (through Oct 19, presumably UK time). I don't think the hard copy is available yet. Get it while it's free! cambridge.org/core/elements/…

AI just got a crystal-clear upgrade. 💎 @MIT researchers built a multimodal model combining 3D atomic structures with literature & computation—allowing AI to "see" crystalline bonding and reason about material properties for tech like solid-state batteries. news.mit.edu/2026/giving-ai-… #MaterialsScience #AI #MachineLearning #Nanotechnology #MIT #Innovation #CleanEnergy #ScienceTwitter @MIT_DMSE #MultimodalAI

Is "attention" really the essence of intelligence, or just a mathematical trick for scalable pattern recognition? Natalie Wolchover’s latest @QuantaMagazine piece explores how a 2014 translation fix sparked the LLM boom. While attention powers fluency, true biological intelligence requires far more than next-token prediction across static text. quantamagazine.org/is-attent… #ArtificialIntelligence #CognitiveScience #QuantaMagazine #MachineLearning #DeepLearning #LLMs #Neuroscience #Agency #PatternRecognition #Biology

Could it be that AI solving math’s hardest open problems isn’t a triumph, but an existential crisis for human thought? Will Human mathematicians forevermore be dethroned as the main theorem-proving entities on planet earth? As AI cracks math’s hardest open problems, researchers face an existential reckoning: if machines generate proofs without insight, what happens to human understanding? Jordana Cepelewicz for @QuantaMagazine explores grief, anger, and the battle over the soul of mathematics: quantamagazine.org/is-ai-the… #Qualia #Mathematics #PureMath #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #MachineLearning #OpenAI #MathResearch #ScienceNews #PhilosophyOfMath

New study reports a quantum state inside living mitochondria. An anomalous 71.0-THz oscillation mode appears only in living cells, tissues, and structurally intact mitochondria—disappearing when the organized cristae architecture is destroyed. The authors model it as a mito-polariton: a quantum superposition arising from strong light-matter coupling between mid-infrared photons and the ordered, high-density lipid CH₂ bonds in functional cristae. This splits the intrinsic ~87 THz CH₂ stretch into hybrid levels at ~71 THz and ~103 THz. Weak MIR illumination at 71 or 87 THz (far below optogenetic intensities) increases ATP production by ~10% in living cells, pointing to an energy-efficient quantum channel for modulating metabolism. This spectral and theoretical evidence resonates strongly with observations we reported in 2019. Color Doppler ultrasonography of the radial artery allowed rapid assessment of isovolumetric relaxation time as a macroscopic proxy for mitochondrial ATP generation in cardiomyocytes, while novel Doppler signals originating from within median-nerve axons were interpreted as reflecting mitochondrial trafficking/flow. We hypothesized that the high-efficiency “redox sweet spot” of the electron-transport chain involves prolonged quantum coherence and entanglement, potentially protecting against decoherence and linking energy production, ROS minimization, and even information transfer. Taken together, the new mito-polariton data and the earlier Doppler signatures converge on the idea that living mitochondria support non-classical, structure-dependent quantum processes that help explain their extraordinary energetic efficiency—and may open routes for information handling relevant to bioenergetics, cancer, neurodegeneration, and embodied cognition. biorxiv.org/content/10.64898… thescipub.com/pdf/ajisp.2019… Scritto da Marco in Italiano, tradotto da GrokAI @MacrinePhD @SterlingCooley @JustinEchterna9 @jaimeojedas

One of my favorites, cognitive neuroscientist Earl K. Miller @MillerLabMIT, describes cortical neurons as "Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall"—teetering right on the edge of firing. Oscillating electrical activity and complex traveling waves alter synaptic voltage gradients in real time, steering neural excitability, sensory prediction, and memory across the cortex. A fascinating look at the brain's emergent, large-scale biophysical coordination via @QuantaMagazine: quantamagazine.org/surprisin… #CognitiveScience #Neuroscience #BrainWaves #DeepTech #AnalogComputing #EnergyEfficiency #ArtificialIntelligence #SynapticPlasticity

Regenerative medicine is officially crossing the bridge from the bench to the bedside. 🧫🫀 After years of hype, regenerative medicine is entering a new clinical era. Marking its 10th anniversary, @UZH_en’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine (IREM) showcases what true translation looks like. By integrating GLP discovery, GMP manufacturing, and clinical trial pipelines under one roof, UZH’s IREM is turning complex biological mechanisms into real patient cures—from biomimetic implants that grow with pediatric patients and bioengineered heart valves, to CRISPR-guided stem cell therapies, clinical-stage gene repair, and breakthrough neuroregeneration. 🔬✨nature.com/articles/d42473-0… #RegenerativeMedicine #CellTherapy #Biomaterials #TranslationalResearch #Bioengineering #HealthTech #UZH #StemCells #TissueEngineering #GeneTherapy #Biotech #TranslationalMedicine #HeartValves

New in Communications Biology shows that a single recurrent spiking neural network (RSNN) can jointly encode “what,” “when,” and probability using purely local learning rules—adapting to statistical shifts in under 50 trials. Everyday perception is multidimensional. Rather than isolating tasks into separate computational modules, Chao & Yamada show that 1,000 spiking neurons can factorize identity, timing, and likelihood into overlapping population patterns via error-modulated local plasticity. A biologically plausible blueprint for adaptive edge AI and neuromorphic hardware. 🔬 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-1… #Neuroscience #BioAI #NeuromorphicComputing #PredictiveCoding #MachineLearning #SNN #ComputationalNeuroscience #PredictiveCoding #PredictiveProcessing #Biology #RSNN #SpikingNeuralNetworks #SNN #NeuromorphicComputing #BioAI #MachineLearning #HebbianLearning #LocalPlasticity