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Jes Pass

@jespass

Neuroscience postdoc | Combining reinforcement learning and circuit-based neuroscience to understand what learning is

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09.06.2025
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Latest posts by Jes Pass @jespass

Adaptive integration of model-based and model-free strategies in human reinforcement learning of reachable space https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.02.709046v1

04.03.2026 18:15 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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How does the brain generalize past experiences without confusing memories? 🧠

Our lab's newest preprint reveals a fundamental division of labor between the cortex and cerebellum that solves this problem. (Check out the cortex-cerebellum video below! πŸ‘‡) 🧡

05.03.2026 10:45 πŸ‘ 65 πŸ” 19 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 5
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🧠 New year, new preprint!

Why does motor learning involve multiple brain regions? We propose that the cortico-cerebellar system learns a "map" of actions where similar movements are nearby, while basal ganglia do RL in this simplified space.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

05.01.2026 12:54 πŸ‘ 98 πŸ” 25 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 3
Poster Presentation

Excited to head to CCN @cogcompneuro.bsky.social next week! Come checkout a project I've been working on with @mariaeckstein.bsky.social using interpretable AI to understand flexible behavior in my talk on Thursday morning and poster on Friday evening: 2025.ccneuro.org/poster/?id=A...

08.08.2025 14:09 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Pleased to share our ICML Spotlight with @eberleoliver.bsky.social, Thomas McGee, Hamza Giaffar, @taylorwwebb.bsky.social.

Position: We Need An Algorithmic Understanding of Generative AI

What algorithms do LLMs actually learn and use to solve problems?🧡1/n
openreview.net/forum?id=eax...

20.06.2025 15:48 πŸ‘ 160 πŸ” 37 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 3
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Excited to share this project specifying a research direction I think will be particularly fruitful for theory-driven cognitive science that aims to explain natural behavior!

We're calling this direction "Naturalistic Computational Cognitive Science"

16.06.2025 19:30 πŸ‘ 99 πŸ” 22 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 2

Our preprint is finally out! How can we understand the role of Behavioral Timescale Synaptic Plasticity in credit assignment? Does it fit into existing supervised and unsupervised learning frameworks? What theoretical gaps are still left unexplained?

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

16.06.2025 08:21 πŸ‘ 11 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Our work, out at Cell, shows that the brain’s dopamine signals teach each individual a unique learning trajectory. Collaborative experiment-theory effort, led by Sam Liebana in the lab. The first experiment my lab started just shy of 6y ago & v excited to see it out: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

11.06.2025 15:17 πŸ‘ 212 πŸ” 71 πŸ’¬ 7 πŸ“Œ 2

Congrats to the fantastic Jess P for her new paper! She compared how feature Vs outcome focussed agents learn to solve contextual inference problems. She found that you need a balance of both to learn these tasks - and that this mix recapitulates pfc and hippocampal activity in rodent tasks!

29.05.2025 21:35 πŸ‘ 16 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1