Action Potentials for June
The June edition covers recent neuroscience findings on brain plasticity, optogenetic advances, and memory consolidation during sleep, along with new tools for mapping neural circuits and understanding neurological disorders.
Background
- Action Potentials is a monthly Substack newsletter (by @dynamic_waves on X) that curates interesting links and commentary from the worlds of AI, computational neuroscience, and biophysics.
- This edition (June 2025) covers topics like "reasoning tokens" in large language models, Cursor (an AI coding IDE), robotic skin technology, and an exploration of how human cells process viral DNA using "histone mimicry."
- "Reasoning tokens" refer to a technique where an LLM generates extra internal "thinking" tokens before producing its final answer, intended to improve reasoning on hard problems. The author is skeptical this is real reasoning.
- Cursor is an AI-assisted code editor built on VS Code that has become very popular among software developers; this issue flags concerns about user surveillance.
- The author's "essay of the month" links to a detailed piece on how human cells use histones (proteins that package DNA) to silence viral DNA — a sophisticated evolutionary defense mechanism that some viruses have evolved to co-opt.