Dániel Barabási

OSNAP!

I received an NIH Outstanding Scholars in Neuroscience Award

This award makes my heart sing -- between college and PhD I spent a year researching at the NIMH, and loved every minute of the campus and community.

Feels full circle to be honored by NIMH post-PhD!

Guide: barabasi.me/fellowships/

List: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

As always, DM or email with any questions!

Recent PhD Grad, or planning on defending soon?

With current funding uncertainties, postdoc fellowships, often funded by private donations, can provide job stability in the coming years.

I put together a short guide and list of fellowships I applied to 👇

Making Roads Safer for Pedestrians and Cyclists | Harvard Magazine Working to curb road deaths

Tragically beautiful article from @harvardmagazine.bsky.social about the absurdity of letting death machines into our cities, and how simple fixes can return "complete" streets to the people.

Amsterdam and Copenhagen transformed, what's stopping Boston?

www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/03/harv...

Breast Cancer:
nature.com/articles/d41...

Pregnancy and the Brain:
nature.com/articles/d41...

X Chromosome and the Brain:
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

In the vein of Women's History Month and International Women's Day, Nature published a number of fascinating women's health studies recently, including:

Hormone cycle's effect on breast cancer treatment.

Brain restructuring under pregnancy.

X chromosome + brain aging.

Links👇

Global modules robustly emerge from local interactions and smooth gradients - Nature The principle of peak selection is described, by which local interactions and smooth gradients drive self-organization of discrete global modules.

1/ Our paper appeared in @Nature today! www.nature.com/articles/s41... w/ Fiete Lab and @khonamikail.bsky.social .
Explains emergence of multiple grid cell modules, w/ excellent match to data! Novel mechanism for applying across vast systems from development to ecosystems. 🧵👇

Guide: barabasi.me/fellowships/
Fellowships: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Please DM me with fellowships I should add!

Are you a PhD student thinking about PostDoc options?

Fellowships provide early independence, and some early deadlines are in spring and summer!

Check out my guide below for navigating the process, plus a curated fellowship list with deadlines, salaries & more.

We call those the "Four Ss," but unfortunately the title got cut.

Also in the paper, the "Four Fs": Feeding, Fleeing, Fighting, and Mating.

Thanks @harvardmcb.bsky.social‬ for sharing this recap of our work!

Click through at the mcb.harvard link, or in my tweetorial below for full text access!

bsky.app/profile/did:...

So while certain elements can be reused, and indeed on different timescales, in many cases the System Two learning is a quick realization, which can be seen in the neural dynamics, where System Three places the knowledge into the animal's repertoire through more extensive synaptic rewiring.

Thanks for sharing!

I distinguish System Two and System Three as follows:

System Two, the Eureka Moment, can be implemented dynamically, e.g. a shift in attractor state, with a sprinkle of STDP.

But then System Three exists to "deepen the well", like with hippocampal replay.

Three systems of circuit formation: assembly, updating and tuning - Nature Reviews Neuroscience In this Perspective, Barabási, Ferreira Castro and Engert challenge the notion that learning and plasticity primarily drive the assembly of neural circuits. They present a tripartite framework for how...

Interesting review on the acquisition of motor skills through (1) innate (2) opportunity-based and (3) systematic tuning processes. The framework is compelling although (2) and (3) may I think be the same process at different time scales.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thanks for sharing!!

For anyone interested in a quick recap, see our thread here: bsky.app/profile/bdan...

Three systems of circuit formation: assembly, updating and tuning Nature Reviews Neuroscience - In this Perspective, Barabási, Ferreira Castro and Engert challenge the notion that learning and plasticity primarily drive the assembly of neural circuits. They...

Encountering a paywall?

Read for free at this link: rdcu.be/ea4rd

Takeaways:
• Most innate circuits (System One) are pre-coded genetically.
• “Learning” (System Two) can be shockingly rare but potent when it happens.
• Ongoing plasticity (System Three) is mostly to stabilize or fine-tune your existing wiring.

But why do we think we learn?
• Human babies are born relatively immature → System One finishes outside the womb.
• Language/semantic memory makes us feel like everything is learned.
• AI hype around “learning from scratch” feeds the misconception that all brains do the same.

In this vein, we separate circuit formation into three “systems,” each deployed at different times and contexts:
• System One: Developmental Maturation
• System Two: Eureka Moments
• System Three: Staying Tuned

We resolve this nature–nurture conflict by proposing that:

(1) Critical knowledge for engaging the world is realized by development,

(2) Novel information isn’t strictly required for daily competence, and

(3) Plasticity mainly provides homeostatic feedback stabilization.

Dániel Barabási on X: "Nature over Nurture: with @GregorFPS and @EngertLab, we find that functional neuronal circuits emerge in the absence of developmental activity. Essentially, complex visuo-motor pathways mature even without activity-dependent refinement 🧵 https://t.co/UXERDqTciu" / X Nature over Nurture: with @GregorFPS and @EngertLab, we find that functional neuronal circuits emerge in the absence of developmental activity. Essentially, complex visuo-motor pathways mature even without activity-dependent refinement 🧵 https://t.co/UXERDqTciu

However, this view conflicts with innate behaviors.

Many animals perform intricate problem-solving immediately after birth—well before experience could shape their connections (see our previous work: x.com/bdanubius/st...).

So how can circuits function so effectively so soon?

Dogmatically, circuits assembly has been split into two phases:

(1) predetermined, genetically driven coarse wiring of the nervous system.

(2) pruning and refinement through interactions with the environment, which is thought to fine-tune mission-critical neural connectivity.

How much do we *really* learn?

In @natrevneurosci.bsky.social‬ with Florian Engert and
André Ferreira Castro, we address why most of you humans firmly believe that patterned activity plays a necessary and instructive role in shaping neural circuits.

Mating proximity blinds threat perception

Valentine's Day themed paper: how a dopamine-governed filter during courtship turns off the serotonergic wave that would otherwise force them to abort and flee.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07890-3

🔥🔥🔥 Efficiency, resiliency tradeoff + behavioral reconfiguration of circuits provide clean interpretations of the multi-scale structure of brain activity 🔥🔥🔥

Not sure why @macshine.bsky.social @drbreaky.bsky.social + co are not posting more about their fantastic paper from last week:

"Multiscale organization of neuronal activity unifies scale-dependent theories of brain function"

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

thanks for the shoutout, and love the paper sharing initiative! I failed to fully crost-post mine from twitter last year

I was part of two (successful) union fights at Harvard, Grad Student and Postdoc. All the best to the @forbesunion.bsky.social team in the coming days!

Massively humbled to be on the 2025 Forbes Science 30 under 30 List

Huge thanks to my mentors, family, friends and collaborators — I would not be here with you all.

Now here's to living up to his honor in my next 30 years!

#ForbesUnder30

Hotspot shelters stimulate frog resistance to chytridiomycosis by Waddle et al

🔥 frogs sauna to fight fungal infection 🔥

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07582-y