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Marcel S. Kehl

@mskehl.bsky.social
351 followers 631 following 20 posts

Oxford Postdoc in the Staresina Lab | Sleep | Memory | Human Olfaction & Single Neurons

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Reposted by Marcel S. Kehl
Scott Cairney @sacairney.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Fully funded PhD studentship investigating sleep’s role in forgetting unwanted memories at my lab at @yorkpsychology.bsky.social, starting in September 2027. Funding includes UK home fees and a 3-year tax-free stipend (~£22K per year). Please share widely www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
findaphd.com
Forgetting unwanted memories during sleep at University of York on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Forgetting unwanted memories during sleep at University of York, listed on FindAPhD.com
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Sander van Bree @sandervanbree.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Excited to share our preprint! w/ @martinhebart.bsky.social To understand how primates visually process objects in the world, we rely on both research in human and macaque IT. But what representations of object space are actually shared between them? biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Quick thread 🧵
biorxiv.org
Shared and Distinct High-Dimensional Object Spaces in Human and Macaque Inferotemporal Cortex
Human and macaque studies of inferotemporal cortex (IT) have shaped our understanding of object vision, yet the extent of their representational alignment and the precise nature of this correspondence...
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Esteban @estebanbt.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Summer Preprint Alert 🔥🚨 Breathing isn't just for oxygen; it’s a rhythmic pacemaker for the sleeping brain. Our new preprint shows that the respiratory cycle actually gates memory reactivation during NREM sleep! 🧠😴💨 👇🧵(1/8)
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Alana Darcher @alanadarcher.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
🎉 *extremely* excited to share our human single neuron + movie dataset is out in #ScientificData! 📄 Human neuron activity during an 83-minute movie from 2,286 neurons and 29 patients 🔗https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-026-07955-0 1st public dataset from @humansingleneuron.bsky.social!🧵
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Neil Burgess @neilburgess10.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Ever wondered how the hippocampal cognitive map is read-out? @changmin-yu.bsky.social @zilong-ji.bsky.social with Jake & John, show that, during navigation, theta sweeps indicate remembered goal-directions (cf. current/next movements or perceptual targets) 1/2 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Decoded locations from place cell firing sweep towards a remembered goal location during each theta cycle irrespective of the current movement or head direction
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Reposted by Marcel S. Kehl
Liz Siefert @lizsiefert.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
New preprint! We show low arousal states promote hippocampal ripple genesis in sleep and wake. This bridges rodent work, where ripples predominate during sleep, with human studies reporting ripples during active behavior, identifying low arousal as a common mechanism www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Arousal state modulates human hippocampal ripples
Hippocampal ripples are transient, high-frequency oscillations linked to memory replay and consolidation. Ripples are well-characterized in rodents to occur during periods of behavioral inactivity (i....
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Reposted by Marcel S. Kehl
Sophia Wilhelm @sophiawilhelm.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
🔔 Our new preprint is out! Here we asked whether sleep spindles - a hallmark NREM rhythm linked to plasticity and memory - changes how well latent working memory representations can be accessed after a nap.
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Sleep spindles enhance latent working memory representations www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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acausse.bsky.social @acausse.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
🧵 How does the human brain turn experiences into memories? During my four years of PhD at Oxford, I investigated this question through a collaboration between Oxford, Toulouse, and Paris, recording directly from the human brain during a relational memory task.
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Pin-Chun Chen @pinchunc.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
🔔 Preprint: “Hippocampal ripples evoke a stereotyped cortical response followed by spindle-mediated network synchronization.” Combining iEEG+scalp EEG during sleep, we show that hippocampal ripples leave a decodable cortical fingerprint and are followed by brain-wide spindle synchronization!
doi.org
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Martin Hebart @martinhebart.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
I'm proud to say we are releasing LAION-fMRI, a densely sampled 7T fMRI dataset of natural images, with very broad stimulus sampling for testing countless hypotheses and for deeply exploring brain representations. The dataset is now available at laion-fmri.hebartlab.com What does LAION-fMRI offer? 🧵
laion-fmri.hebartlab.com
LAION-fMRI - a 7T fMRI dataset of human vision
LAION-fMRI (LfMRI / LAION MRI dataset): 5 subjects, 25,052 launch-release natural images, 165 acquired 7T fMRI sessions with single-trial GLMsingle betas, retinotopy, localizers, and diffusion.
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Tobias Ackels @tobiasackels.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
🚨 Preprint alert! 🚨 How does the olfactory bulb transform overlapping sensory inputs into representations that are easier to distinguish? New study by Sina Tootoonian, Yikai Yang, @andreas-t-schaefer.bsky.social @crick.ac.uk and myself.‬ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... A short 🧵 below
biorxiv.org
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Datta Lab @dattalab.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Excited to see our paper describing a stereotyped receptor map for smell (led by @davidhbrann.bsky.social ) out in the world! See below for short thread with open access link to paper www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/s...
nytimes.com
Scientists Unveil ‘Long Lost’ Map for Smell
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PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · 13/04/2026
How do experiences reshape our internal representations of the world? @bstaresina.bsky.social &co show that learning sequential experiences reshapes how the #brain represents what we see; a post-learning nap strengthens these predictive changes @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4dJGwMC
Emergence of Successor Representations and Experimental Design. Top: Example of how sequence learning and sleep might change neural representations. Upon encountering a Welsh Corgi, the brain primarily represents the current stimulus entity. If the Corgi is part of a recurring temporal sequence (Corgi → Girl → House), subsequent stimuli (Girl and House) might be integrated into the Corgi representation. Post-learning sleep might provide an opportunity for the brain to replay learned experiences and thereby further strengthen successor representations. Upon post-sleep exposure to a Corgi image (right), brain activation patterns might reflect both the current stimulus (Corgi) as well as learned successors (Girl, House). Faded images indicate weaker representations. Middle: Timeline of the experiment. Participants first completed a perceptual task, followed by a sequence learning task (Memory Arena). Memory for the learned sequence was then assessed both before and after a period of sleep. Finally, participants completed the perceptual task again. Bottom left: Memory Arena sequence design. Participants (N = 26) were tasked with learning the spatiotemporal structure of 50 images. These images belonged to five distinct categories (letter strings, scenes, objects, faces, and body parts) and were organized into 10 subsequences of five images each, following one of two fixed category orders: (i) letter string, scene, object, face, or (ii) object, scene, letter string, face, with body part images randomly inserted to obscure the primary category sequences. The two subsequence types were counterbalanced across participants. Bottom right: Memory Arena location design. The Arena was spatially organized into five principal ‘slices’, with each slice corresponding to one of the five main image categories.
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
Decomposing representational drift across wake and sleep www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Sleep ripples drive single-neuron reactivation for human memory consolidation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Here is the direct bioRxiv link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
9/9: Huge thanks to everyone who contributed: Bernhard Staresina, @bstaresina.bsky.social, Florian Mormann, @humansingleneuron.bsky.social, @treber.bsky.social, Valeri Borger, Rainer Surges, @oxexppsy.bsky.social, @ox.ac.uk, @erc.europa.eu, @oxcin.bsky.social, @unibonn.bsky.social, @medsci.ox.ac.uk
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
8/9: Our findings indicate that ripple-driven single-neuron reactivation supports human episodic memory consolidation and show why sleep, compared to wakefulness, offers a privileged window for stabilizing memories.
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
7/9: How does this reactivation link to cortical activity? We found that ripple-associated neuronal MTL bursts were propagated across widespread cortical regions, suggesting a possible network mechanism for systems-level consolidation.
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
6/9: We discovered that neurons tuned to items that were later remembered fired more strongly during ripples than neurons coding for forgotten items. This memory-linked reactivation was selectively observed during sleep.
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
5/9: How is this reactivation linked to behaviour? We constructed a memory task around neurons that responded to specific stimuli used during learning. This allowed us to compare ripple-triggered reactivation across neurons responding to remembered versus forgotten stimuli.
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
4/9: We found that human ripples robustly drive neuronal firing, with sleep ripples eliciting stronger activation than wake ripples.
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
3/9: Using rare intracranial recordings, we simultaneously measured single-neuron activity and intracranial EEG during wakefulness and sleep, allowing us to identify ripples and ripple-locked neuronal firing in the human brain.
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
2/9: Rodent studies identified hippocampal ripples as a core mechanism of memory consolidation and neuronal replay, and human imaging revealed macroscopic patterns of offline reactivation. But the cellular basis of human memory consolidation remains unknown.
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
🔔PREPRINT: Sleep ripples drive single-neuron reactivation for human memory consolidation 1/9: How does sleep support human memory consolidation? To test this, we recorded hundreds of neurons in the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) across learning, wakefulness, and sleep. doi.org/10.64898/202...
doi.org
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Tobias Ackels @tobiasackels.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
One week left to apply!
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
A learning-evoked slow-oscillatory architecture paces population activity for offline reactivation across the human medial temporal lobe www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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lucakaemmer.bsky.social @lucakaemmer.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Finally out in eLife!! "Early foveal cortex predicts the features of saccade targets through feedback from higher cortical areas." elifesciences.org/articles/107...
elifesciences.org
Feedback of peripheral saccade targets to early foveal cortex
Low-level features of peripheral saccade targets are fed back to early foveal retinotopic cortex in a signal that resembles activation elicited by direct foveal presentation.
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Bernhard Staresina @bstaresina.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Last week to apply! Cognitive Neuroscience Research Laboratory Manager at @oxexppsy.bsky.social (with links to @oxcin.bsky.social and @ox.ac.uk) www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPZ833/c...
jobs.ac.uk
Cognitive Neuroscience Research Laboratory Manager at University of Oxford
Check out jobs.ac.uk for opportunities in professional services, including Cognitive Neuroscience Research Laboratory Manager. Apply today and learn more about the role.
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Fabian Schwimmbeck @fabian31415.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
How are memories consolidated during sleep? Excited to share another preprint: hippocampal SWRs route memory content to the cortex via interregional co-reactivation of concept cells, optimized by slow-oscillation–spindle coupling. With the great @tschreiner.bsky.social @humansingleneuron.bsky.social
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Nature @nature.com · 13/01/2026
Nature research paper: Distinct neuronal populations in the human brain combine content and context go.nature.com/4jCecge
go.nature.com
Distinct neuronal populations in the human brain combine content and context - Nature
Single-neuron recordings in humans reveal largely separate content and context neurons whose coordinated activity flexibly places memory items in context.
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Liset M. de la Prida @lmprida.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
What is a 🧠 ripple? See our @cellpress.bsky.social perspective on ripple diversity and the grammar of memory replay: connecting key pieces from current work across the field. 👉🏼 www.sciencedirect.com:5037/science/arti...
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Esteban @estebanbt.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
I'm happy to share my debut as first-author with the recent publication of our article in #JNeurosci: www.jneurosci.org/content/earl... Big thanks again to @tschreiner.bsky.social and the whole team who made this possible! 🧠🌬️
jneurosci.org
Respiration shapes the neural dynamics of successful remembering in humans.
Respiration has been shown to impact memory retrieval, yet the neural dynamics underlying this effect remain unclear. Here, we investigated how respiration shapes both behavioral and neural expression...
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Bernhard Staresina @bstaresina.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Well done Pin-Chun! Thanks also to @oxexppsy.bsky.social, @oxcin.bsky.social, and @erc.europa.eu
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Alana Darcher @alanadarcher.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
How is the semantic content of a movie processed by our brains? 🧠🎬 We decode characters, events, & other features and investigate how populations and single neurons represent movie features. Check my poster @sfn.org #sfn25! Sat. Nov 15, 6:45-8:45pm, Hall E, poster S5 Wed. Nov 19, 9-10am, poster NN5
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Randolph Helfrich @randolph-helfrich.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
New work from the lab published in @cp-neuron.bsky.social by @jonasterlau.bsky.social and Jan Martini. We describe that trial-by-trial variability indexes recurrent connectivity across the cortical hierarchy, which supports reliable and flexible coding www.cell.com/neuron/abstr... (1/4)
cell.com
Structure in noise: Recurrent connectivity shapes neural variability to balance perceptual and cognitive demands in the human brain
Does neural variability reflect random noise or a feature that benefits adaptive behavior? Using intracranial recordings in humans, Terlau et al. demonstrate that neural variability results from the r...
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Yvonne Chen @yvonnechen.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
My Lab @unlv.edu is recruiting motivated students interested in human memory and brain research! Learn #EEG, #fMRI, and data analysis while exploring how we remember 🧠 📧 DM me or check out #PhD program www.unlv.edu/degree/phd-n... & www.unlv.edu/psychology/g... Plus, Vegas is a fun place to live!🤟
unlv.edu
Doctor of Philosophy - Neuroscience
This interdisciplinary Ph.D. program provides coursework and research training in neuroscience, with research mentoring spanning a range of different dimensions (basic to applied/clinical neuroscience...
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Martin Hebart @martinhebart.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
Please repost! I am looking for a PhD candidate in the area of Computational Cognitive Neuroscience to start in early 2026. The position is funded as part of the Excellence Cluster "The Adaptive Mind" at @jlugiessen.bsky.social. Please apply here until Nov 25: www.uni-giessen.de/de/ueber-uns...
View from your office onto Giessen and surrounding villages.
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
8/8: A huge thanks to Katharina Karkowski and everyone contributing! @humansingleneuron.bsky.social, Florian Mormann, Yair Lakretz, @martinhebart.bsky.social, @standehaene.bsky.social, @alanadarcher.bsky.social @treber.bsky.social, @yjqin.bsky.social, Philipp Karkowski, Valeri Borger & Rainer Surges
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
7/8: Which semantic models best explain these neuronal responses? Continuous, vector-based embeddings capture MTL activity more accurately than categorical or network-based models, shedding light on how meaning is structured in the human brain.
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
6/8: Investigating graded responses across neurons revealed region-specific tuning of MTL subregions. Amygdala neurons, for example, showed a preference for food items. These tuning patterns link single-neuron coding with large-scale activity seen in human brain imaging.
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
5/8: This example amygdala neuron responds to several food- and drink-related items but not to unrelated items (such as the bus).
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
4/8: Human MTL neurons exhibit semantic tuning, with graded responses that follow narrow and steep tuning curves (steepest in hippocampus). Neurons preferentially respond to semantically related stimuli, and their firing rates correlate with semantic similarity to preferred stimuli.
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
3/8: Neuronal tuning curves are core coding principles in neuroscience (e.g., in vision and audition). They can vary in width and steepness. Using semantic embeddings and standardised image sets (THINGS), we presented items at controlled semantic distances to map the local semantic vicinity.
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
2/8: The discovery of concept cells sparked debate about binary vs distributed coding. Here, we developed a closed-loop algorithm that adaptively presents images semantically related to response-eliciting stimuli to explore the semantic tuning of MTL neurons.
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Marcel S. Kehl @mskehl.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
🚨Preprint: Semantic Tuning of Single Neurons in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe 1/8: How do human neurons encode meaning? In this work, led by Katharina Karkowski, we recorded hundreds of human MTL neurons to study semantic coding in the human brain: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
doi.org
Semantic Tuning of Single Neurons in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe
The Medial Temporal Lobe (MTL) is key to human cognition, supporting memory, emotional processing, navigation, and semantic coding. Rare direct human MTL recordings revealed concept cells, which were ...
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
Semantic Tuning of Single Neurons in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
Hippocampal stimulation reveals causal role of persistent neural activity in human working memory www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Tim Guth @timaguth.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
Excited to share our new paper on theta-phase locking of single neurons during human spatial memory: www.nature.com/articles/s41... With @lukaskunz.bsky.social, Joshua Jacobs, and our colleagues from the University of Freiburg
Neuronal theta-phase locking increased during periods of elevated theta power, when aperiodic activity exhibited steeper slopes, and when clear theta oscillations were detected. Theta-phase locking was similarly strong during the successful and unsuccessful encoding and retrieval of memories. Some neurons changed their preferred theta phases between encoding and retrieval.
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