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Michael C. Anderson

@memorycontrol.bsky.social
1.1K followers 257 following 73 posts

Neuroscientist at MRC Cognition an Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge, studying memory, cognitive control, and mechanisms of adaptive forgetting

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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Oh yeah, here is the actual paper! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Universal rhythmic architecture uncovers two modes of neural dynamics - Nature Communications
Brain oscillations are traditionally regarded as sustained rhythms. Here, the authors show that there are both high and low-rhythmicity bands, characterised by brief bursts, which can signal responses...
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Brilliant work by Golan Karvat redefines the spectral architecture of electrophysiological activity, expanding the identifiable bands and providing a clear definition of oscillatory/bursty bands. We propose rhythmicity as a dimension of oscillatory activity.Check it out @earlkmiller.bsky.social !
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Marcus Siems @marcussiems.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
„Burst-related potentials as a temporal anchor for cognition“ #preprint #neuroskyence by M.C. Schuma, @ayeletlandau.bsky.social I. Diester, @memorycontrol.bsky.social & G. Karvat osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
OSF
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Alessandro Crimi @alecrimi.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
Review paper arguing that the #brain has a built-in mental brake that stops unwanted thoughts. Via a fronto-temporal pathway, it relies on GABA to calm mental loops. Weak brakes may underlie #PTSD, #OCD, anxiety, and #depression www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
I've been waiting for this paper to drop for some time! I'm super glad to see it finally appear! Congratulations Mick! Looking forward to the final version.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
Blimey!
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 10/08/2025
sounds cool! I wonder, though, what to make of this in relation to the idea that prediction error enhances memory? E.g., www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Does prediction error drive one-shot declarative learning?
The role of prediction error (PE) in driving learning is well-established in fields such as classical and instrumental conditioning, reward learning a…
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
thanks...i can see it now. But still can't save a pdf on my machine....it's restricted.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
Sadly, I am blocked by a Paywall...I guess the University of Cambridge doesn't get this journal? Any other way I can get it?
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
Thanks for sending this!
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
This sounds interesting. I look forward to seeing your paper. Do you have any papers on the grid world approach you are taking (sorry if I should know about this). Demonstrating the consequences of intrusive thinking computationally is important and useful, and I know of no other similar work.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
You raise a fair point which the data cannot address. Overall perf. levels on recall were similar across groups, but episodic memory ability need not equate to cognitive control ability. Causal manipulations of control training needed. Only thing that comes close is www.science.org/doi/full/10....
science.org
Improving mental health by training the suppression of unwanted thoughts
Training people to suppress fearful thoughts improved mental health, especially for those with anxiety and post-traumatic stress.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
Incidentally, college students with a greater childhood history of traumatic experiences show greater suppression-induced forgetting than those who have no such history, according to Justin Hulbert & Mike Anderson (see our JEP G paper from 2018 or so).
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
Can you explain what you mean by "did better"? And regarding the latter point, do you mean that replaying negative events essentially provides an opportunity to learn control behaviours? (not quite sure what you meant).
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
If intrusive thoughts warp cognitive maps in PTSD, does inhibitory control "unwarp them" or at least prevent warping? It would be interesting to see what the impact of control would be. BTW...apropros inhibitory control and intrusive thoughts, see our recent paper. doi.org/10.1038/s415...
doi.org
Brain mechanisms underlying the inhibitory control of thought - Nature Reviews Neuroscience
The capacity to prevent unwanted thoughts is important for cognitive function and mental health. Anderson et al. describe insights into the neural mechanisms of the inhibitory control of thought that ...
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Reposted by Michael C. Anderson
Jörn Alexander Quent @jaquent.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Amazing #RegisteredReport led by Sumaiyah Raza from @mrccbu.bsky.social. We (again) found evidence against a memory benefit of spatial novelty. However, this time we did find a retroactive benefit of rest, which highlights that more work is needed here. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
To my complete surprise, our Nature Reviews Neuroscience review on the Brain Mechanisms Underlying the Inhibitory Control of Thought has landed on the cover! Cover art below! For an "explainer thread", see earlier tweet. bsky.app/profile/memo... @mrccbu.bsky.social #neuroskyence #memory #ptsd
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Lucina Uddin @lucinauddin.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
When I first started working with resting state fMRI as a postdoc, there was a lot of skepticism about what we could learn from it. 20 years later, it's hard to imagine where the field of neuroscience would be without it. Here's a summary 🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
The history and future of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging - Nature
This Review provides an overview of the history of resting-state functional MRI research, which has helped to reveal the spatiotemporal organization of the brain, and discusses how it can contribute f...
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
This looks shockingly useful. Thanks, on behalf of the field!!
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 27/05/2025
I'm not sure BlueSky is declining...perhaps I missed the discussion that led up to this. For example, this Times Higher Ed piece suggests it is doing well, as far as Science is concerned. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/xs-domi...
timeshighereducation.com
X’s dominance ‘over’ as Bluesky becomes new hub for research
Data indicates more scholars turning to alternative social media site to post about their work after Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover
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Reposted by Michael C. Anderson
Nature Reviews Neuroscience @natrevneuro.nature.com · 27/05/2025
Brain mechanisms underlying the inhibitory control of thought — a Review by Michael C. Anderson, Maite Crespo-Garcia & S. Subbulakshmi @memorycontrol.bsky.social‬ www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroscience #neuroskyence
nature.com
Brain mechanisms underlying the inhibitory control of thought - Nature Reviews Neuroscience
The capacity to prevent unwanted thoughts is important for cognitive function and mental health. Anderson et al. describe insights into the neural mechanisms of the inhibitory control of thought that ...
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
We hope that our integrative review of retrieval stopping will lay the groundwork for further advances in addressing the distress of intrusive thinking.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
The participants produced an important volume on this subject that lays out the mission of addressing intrusive thoughts and its importance, from diverse perspetives. esforum.de/publications...
esforum.de
Intrusive Thinking - ESForum
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Addressing intrusive thinking is a vital mission in clinical neuroscience and psychiatry. Several years ago, 40 scientists from around the world gathered in an Ernst Strugman forum on Intrusive thinking, organised by Peter Kalivas and ‪@mpwpaulus.bsky.social‬ and facilitated by Julia Lupp.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Research on inhibitory control over memory provides a rich neurocognitive framework through which to understand disordered thought control.More broadly, it complements response inhibition as a tool for understanding the control of action and thought.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Fundamentally, if neuroscience is going to inform how unwanted thoughts are controlled by the brain and address central features of psychiatric disorders, a theoretically valid construct and set of tools for measuring that construct are needed.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
We also discuss the idea that affective stopping engages the same domain general prefrontal components as retrieval stopping, providing an account of fear extinction's benefits. @stevemaren.bsky.social en.bsky.social‬ �� joeydunsmoor.bsky.sococial @thephelpslab.bsky.social
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
These benefits of thought suppression contradict clinical wisdom about the inadvisability of thought suppression. Yet, they are consistent with the (also popular) notion that inhibitory control is fundamental to coping with perseverative thoughts and with resilience broadly. lir-mainz.de/en/home
lir-mainz.de
Home | LIR Mainz - Leibniz-Institut für Resilienzforschung
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Critically, we review evidence that retrieval stopping of unwanted thoughts plays an important role in attenuating affective responding to suppressed content, and also that training people to suppress fearful thoughts improves their mental health. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Improving mental health by training the suppression of unwanted thoughts
Training people to suppress fearful thoughts improved mental health, especially for those with anxiety and post-traumatic stress.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
In another example, hippocampal subfield CA1 volume predicts prefrontal suppression of hippocampal activity during intrusions in a retrieval stopping task, and CA1 volume reduction also predicts intrusive symptoms in people with PTSD. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Variations in response to trauma and hippocampal subfield changes
Models of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suggest that the hippocampus is key to the persistence of traumatic memory. Yet very little is known ab…
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
For example, successful thought stopping is strongly influeced by concentrations of GABA in the hippocampus, that enable hippocampal down-regulation to occur, when people suppress retrieval. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Hippocampal GABA enables inhibitory control over unwanted thoughts - Nature Communications
It is not fully understood how intrusive or unwanted memories are regulated. Here the authors show that hippocampal GABA concentrations, and coupling between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and hip...
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
To capture this fundamental difference, we introduce the concept of a FRONTO-TEMPORAL INHIBITORY CONTROL PATHWAY to capture what is distinct about mental control. This pathway has unique parameters that dictate thought stopping success that are not captured by response inhibition.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Our article integrates 25 years worth of research on the cognitive and brain mechanisms underlying retrieval stoppping. Retrieval stopping shares prefrontal and striatal components with action stopping, but instead modulates hippocampal and cortical regions that represent thoughts.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Indeed, persistent intrusive thoughts are usually retrieved in response to reminders. If so, stopping unwanted thoughts would involve recruiting inhibitory control to stop their retrieval, given a cue. This conceptualization captures every form of intrusive symptom across psychiatric disorders.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
But what do we do instead? Is there another model system for inhibitory control that is conceptually relevant and well understood? YES! RETRIEVAL STOPPING. Retrieval underlies much of the thinking we do. Thoughts do not emerge from nowhere. Perceptual cues or other thoughts elicit them.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
And response inhibition will NOT be influenced by parts of thought stopping circuitry unique to the latter. It's a little like testing models of audition by using a using a visual task. No matter how precise, elegant, and simple your visual task is, it's at best partially relevant to your goal.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
This is not a small point. Inhibitory control ability does not equate to prefrontal function. Your ability is determined by the entire circuit that implements stopping. Response inhibition measures will include influences of downstream motor circuitry irrelevant to thought stopping.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
But there is one problem. Stopping motor actions does not invoke thought inhibition, and cannot be used to identify its unique properties. Stopping actions must be achieved by affecting motor cortex; stopping thoughts, by affecting cortical areas represent the thought. The pathways must differ.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Nevertheless, the clear importance of inhibitory control has earned it a seat at the table as a construct relevant to controlling intrusive thoughts, and more broadly, as a fundamental component of executive function. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
The role of prefrontal cortex in cognitive control and executive function - Neuropsychopharmacology
Neuropsychopharmacology - The role of prefrontal cortex in cognitive control and executive function
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
This work's mechanistic depth,along with simple methods of quantifying motor stopping ability, like the stop-signal task, have drawn scientists to apply its methods/lessons to understand intrusive thinking in psychiatric disorders, with variable success. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
Inhibitory control and psychopathology: A meta-analysis of studies using the stop signal task | Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society | Cambridge Core
Inhibitory control and psychopathology: A meta-analysis of studies using the stop signal task - Volume 16 Issue 6
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Inhibitory control research has exploded in the last two decades. For stopping simple actions like key presses and eye movements, we have a sophisticated understanding achieved via imaging, intracranial recording, modeling and invasive work with non-humans. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Neural mechanisms of domain-general inhibitory control
Inhibitory control is a fundamental mechanism underlying flexible behavior and features in theories across many areas of cognitive and psychological s…
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
So how do we stop thoughts? What does neuroscience have to say? Scientists studying intrusive thoughts have leaned on inhibitory control, a mechanism that enables us to stop. When you stop yourself from grabbing a hot pot on the stove before your burn yourself, you have inhibitory control to thank.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Anyone who knows someone with one of these conditions knows how debilitating intrusive thoughts can be. Mental health issues such as anxiety and depression skyrocketing in adolescents. @sjblakemore.bsky.social @tamsinford.bsky.social‬ www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
thelancet.com
The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on youth mental health
Mental ill health, which has been the leading health and social issue impacting the lives and futures of young people for decades, has entered a dangerous phase. Accumulating research evidence indicat...
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Critically, thought stopping is central to mental health. Intrusive thoughts are hallmark features of many disorders: Intrusive memories in PTSD; pathological worry in axiety; rumination in depression; obsessive thinking in OCD; hallucinations in schizophrenia; craving thoughts in addiction.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Indeed, in today’s world, we have much to think about; but less obviously, we also have much to NOT THINK ABOUT.The burden of things we try not to think about has grown weighty: the Ukraine war; chaotic American politics; the rise of right-wing extremism; and climate change, e.g. We all can feel it.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Why is thought stopping vital? First, concentration.We all know the challenge to remain focused, of banishing distracting thoughts. @themindwanders.bsky.social and Kalina Christoff have learned much about mind wandering. Thought stopping is our rebuttal to these excursions, a reassertion of control.
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
How does the brain stop thoughts? Find out in my article in @natrevneuro.nature.com with Subbu Subbulakshmi & Maite Crespo-Garcia www.nature.com/articles/s41... that integrates 25 yrs of psychology and neuroscience on this vital function.@mrccbu.bsky.social sky.social #neuroskyence #neuroscience
nature.com
Brain mechanisms underlying the inhibitory control of thought - Nature Reviews Neuroscience
The capacity to prevent unwanted thoughts is important for cognitive function and mental health. Anderson et al. describe insights into the neural mechanisms of the inhibitory control of thought that ...
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
Congratulations to Ken Paller, this year's recipient of the George Miller Award at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeeting! Superb talk on his work on sleep and memory. @cogneuronews.bsky.social @paller.bsky.social @neurosky.bsky.social
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Should the Medical Research Council end sustained funding for its internationally renowned scientific units? 600 scientists don't think so.The UK needs sustained investment in basic science and challenge-led investments. #Neuroskyence @mrccbu.bsky.social www.timeshighereducation.com/news/nobelis...
timeshighereducation.com
Nobelists urge rethink on MRC unit funding changes
Nobel laureates back calls to pause new system of Medical Research Council funding which threatens future of well-established research units
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Michael C. Anderson @memorycontrol.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
Suppressing memories promotes resilience! Terrorist attack survivors who recovered from PTSD showed normalised inhibitory control of the hippocampus during retrieval stopping before intrusive memory declines, mitigating hippocampal atrophy. #memory #PTSD #neuroskyence www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Plasticity of human resilience mechanisms
PTSD remission is linked to improved fronto-hippocampal inhibitory mechanisms during memory control.
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