Baier Lab MPI for Biological Intelligence

Exploring genes, circuits, and behavior in zebrafish since 1998. Current focus on fish cognitive neuroscience and building a next-gen brain atlas.

[Botond Roska @IOB_Roska]

Our work with José-Alain Sahel's team and @GenSightBio on optogenetic vision restoration is now published in @NEJM

The treatment was safe in all 10 participants, with visual improvements in several patients.

📄 https://t.co/dSPTrlXSum

#Blindness #Optogenetics #IOBBasel

[Baier Lab MPI for Biological Intelligence @BaierLab]

@D_R_Goodwin @GalHaspel Who would you kick out?

[Bahl Lab @BahlLab]

New preprint from the lab!

We built an atlas of functional ensembles across the zebrafish hindbrain, linking whole-hindbrain activity to behavior, structural organization, and molecular features.
A few highlights below 🧵

https://t.co/qN3eYlLAsQ

[Karl Deisseroth @KarlDeisseroth]

Thanks to everyone sharing in this moment!
I’m so grateful to my trainees & collaborators…
https://t.co/6JdZQHnYJf
(pic: optogenetics conference chairs, Tuscany)

Reading for all those asking:

for technical details: https://t.co/x7kQvPujvq

for everyone: https://t.co/1omhw0hKAV

[Ewan Morrison @MrEwanMorrison]

Language is not fundamental to human consciousness. In terms of evolution, it arrived only recently on our timeline.

Consciousness evolved over millions of years through sensory awareness, emotion, and the embodied survival instincts of our tribal past; our capacity for empathic engagement and community. Syntactic language only emerged around 100,000 years ago.

This is exactly why Large Language Models (LLMs - so called AI) are the wrong pathway to true artificial consciousness.

They try to replicate the late-stage "output layer" of human intelligence without building the foundational, embodied awareness that actually generates it.

Statistical text prediction is a mirror of thought, not the spine, the guts, the nerves and the subconscious, empathic ability to connect with other living beings. LLMs can never feel, let alone think.

We have been sold a trick, not a pathway to superintelligence. LLMs are fraudulent. Their capabilities have already peaked and we are being sold lies about their future potential. Lies with the goal of companies reaching IPO and tricking investors out of hundreds of billion$.

[Baier Lab MPI for Biological Intelligence @BaierLab]

@AdrianoAguzzi „If you know exactly what you’re doing you’re not at the forefront of science“

[UCSD BioSciences @ucsdbiosciences]

Published today in @Nature: A study shows that fish swimming in schools can avoid danger just by seeing their neighbors escape. The researchers imaged the brain activity of translucent glassfish swimming in a virtual reality environment. https://t.co/hvmk3Exql2

[Loïc A. Royer 💻🔬⚗️ @loicaroyer]

What if any dataset, any size, any number of dimensions, opened in a browser tab from a link? 🔬🧪💻

Luxar is out today: write it in Python, share it as a link, explore it in any browser. Open source. 🧵 @biohub

[Karsten Borgwardt @kmborgwardt]

We have openings for two exciting postdoc positions, one in Graph Learning, the other in Bioinformatics, in my lab for #MachineLearning & #SystemsBiology at the @MPI_Biochem - Apply by September 30. @MLSB_Borgwardt:

https://t.co/CvLlvtrCXF

https://t.co/O5uBqKig5v

[Baier Lab MPI for Biological Intelligence @BaierLab]

@cto_maverick @ShonaMurray_ @WiringTheBrain @SimonHarrisTD There is no sign of humanity in your disgusting hatred of Jews.

[Javier De La Hera @DrJavierDeLaHe1]

Dan Dennett said that when he pointed to weird neurological diseases that radically challenge our common sense introspective knowledge of consciousness, he was met with disbelief by fellow philosophers. This is an endemic problem in some armchair philosophers: they become convinced the secrets of life , meaning and the universe can just be intuited away.

Case in point, I present for your consideration Anton-Babinski Syndrome.

In this neurological disorder the visual cortex is destroyed but the eyes and optic pathways are largely intact. As you would expect, patients are blind and stumble on the furniture, can't describe their surroundings and are generaly incapable of visual tasks.

So far so good....except for a tiny detail:

Patients emphatically deny that they are blind! They categorically report they can see their surroundings and have normal visual experience! When asked why they stumble on furniture, hit walls while walking or similar, they confabulate explanations in order to explain away their behavior.

These people have no visual processing yet firmly believe they are seeing the world.

Now tell me again about the infallibility of introspection regarding subjective experience and qualia! Thump your fist at the table and tell me it is absolutely certain the blueness of blue is a real phenomenal quale that shows physicalism is hopeless!

https://t.co/7iaGpzdP22

[Adam Cohen @AdamEzraCohen]

We wrote a tutorial guide on voltage imaging, now out in Neuron: https://t.co/wfLz4mxFeP. Indicators, microscopes, and software have all advanced to the point that it's not so hard -- you can now directly watch the electrical activity of neurons in live animals or in culture.

[Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D. @hubermanlab]

The accounts misusing clips from the Huberman Lab podcast to demonize cortisol (a hormone you want very elevated in first hour of your day and low in final hours of your night, BTW) are hilarious. Cortisol is neither “good” or “bad” just get the timing right per above by…

[nature @Nature]

Nature research paper: Connectome analysis of a cerebellum-like circuit for sensory prediction

https://t.co/s1RQbjj5PT

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Three logicians walk into a bar..

[Karsten Borgwardt @kmborgwardt]

Our new Max Planck School on #Biomedical #AI is now on X (@MPS_BMAI) and accepting applications for PhD positions from September 1, 2026 (start of the PhD a year later, in September 2027). More details tba #AI #MachineLearning #LifeSciences #MaxPlanckSchool

[The Transmitter @_TheTransmitter]

Kevin Mitchell @WiringTheBrain talks to Timothy Behrens @behrenstimb about which neural systems the field has genuinely cracked.
https://t.co/efGv9vTq1j

[Earl K. Miller @MillerLabMIT]

Today's AI systems learn mostly by passively absorbing data, but the brain builds intelligence in the reverse order.

Grounded world models in biological organisms and future embodied AI
https://t.co/jIj7bfeoN7
#neuroscience

[Yu Mu @muyuuyum]

A short Research Briefing on our recent work:

“How the zebrafish brain weaves recent experiences into future decisions”

Grateful to the Nature team for helping tell the story clearly.

https://t.co/cCkhr6m8BU

[Mackenzie Weygandt Mathis, PhD @TrackingActions]

Mice perform active sensing to acquire visual info: check out our collaborative effort, which is our 1st in motor+vision!

Great to work with @AToliasLab Xaq and Cris - 💰by the Brain Initiative @NIH! Led by @celia_bqt & @sainsbury_tom

@CurrentBiology

https://t.co/xFnDhnHUOl?