iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Colin Bredenberg @colin-bredenberg.bsky.social · 8h

Hi all, I'm happy to announce that I have started at the University of Oregon as an assistant professor! My group will use computational methods to study learning and synaptic plasticity. I will be hiring grad students this year--please reach out if you're interested! colinbre@uoregon.edu

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Chris Baldassano @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I'm recruiting PhD students this cycle! We study how the brain perceives, remembers, and predicts naturalistic experiences like movies and games, using computational tools to analyze behavioral and neural data 🧠 App deadline is 12/2/26 - see our lab pubs on our website www.dpmlab.org/pubs.html

dpmlab.org

Columbia Dynamic Perception and Memory Lab

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Jason Tsukahara @drjt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I will be accepting a Master’s or PhD student to join my lab at University of North Carolina Wilmington! If you know any students that may be interested, please share this post with them. My lab: calmlab.science Master’s: www.uncw.edu/academics/ma... PhD: www.uncw.edu/academics/ma...

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Melissa Franch, PhD @mfranch.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Excited to see this work published! We find that the brain codes semantic relationships similar to contextual LLMs (like GPT2) but unlike LLMs, uses contrastive coding to prevent confusion of highly similar words. Many thanks to the reviewers and BCM neurosurgery team! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

A population code for semantics in human hippocampus - Nature Neuroscience

Franch et al. show that human hippocampal neurons encode the meanings of the words we hear through distributed, context-sensitive population activity that mirrors some features of large language model...

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tor @torwager.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

neuromarkers.io : Browse, view, and download fMRI neuromarkers, population-level predictive brain models that can be applied to new studies and populations

canlab.github.io

Neuromarkers · CANlab

Population-level brain patterns for new studies. Browse, explore, and download published neuromarkers.

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

How do we prevent memories from competing to guide attention? More distinct hippocampal representations for competing memories are linked to precise preparatory coding in visual cortex & more accurate eye movements to target locations. Thrilled to share this work by the incomparable Serra Favila!

nature.com

Hippocampal mechanisms underlying the resolution of competition in memory and perception - Nature Communications

Memory and perception both require selecting behaviorally relevant information. Here, the authors show that more distinct hippocampal memories are linked to precise anticipatory signals in visual cort...

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Nicole Long @dorsolateralpfc.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

New paper from my lab! We show that the retrieval state is recruited during both episodic and semantic retrieval, but not for perceptual judgments, suggesting that the retrieval state tracks domain-general internal attention. www.jneurosci.org/content/46/3...

jneurosci.org

A Shared Brain State for Episodic and Semantic Retrieval

It is critical to identify which factors induce specific brain states as these large-scale patterns of coordinated neural activity drive downstream processing and behavior. The retrieval state, a brai...

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Soroush Mirjalili @soroushmirjalili.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

🧠🚨 How can we measure the latent cognitive processes that work together during complex behavior? In our new Perspective, we propose cross-domain transfer: learning a neural signature of a cognitive process in one task and using it to track that process in another. 🧵 osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.io

OSF

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Adi Upadhyayula @adibuoy23.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

(1/9) Preprint Alert! 🚨 New work on how the brain comprehends narratives. 🧠🎥 Are "Key Moments" - our recent line of research - truly distinct from "Event Boundaries"? We put them to the test to see if these two constructs differ from each other. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

doi.org

OSF

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Abraham Zelalem Vollan @azvollan.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Now in Science: How does the brain’s navigation system allocate its limited representational resources during behavior? We found that grid cells sweep toward locations of interest, providing a potential mechanism for allocating spatial attention in the cognitive map.🧵 science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Reza Shadmehr @rezashadmehr.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

If an action results in error, each neuron requires an individualized teaching signal that guides change in its output. This is the credit assignment problem of learning. Are there neurons in the brain that can compute such a sophisticated teaching signal? Yes. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

Climbing fibers encode the gradient of a loss function for the cerebellum

Neurons in the brain are often many synapses away from motoneurons, yet if a movement results in error, each distant neuron needs a teacher that considers its specific contribution to production of th...

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Rayna Tang @raynatang.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Excited to share that my first-ever first-author paper (w/ @atabk.bsky.social @AngeliqueDelarazan @zreagh.bsky.social) is now out in PNAS! Building a story to link two objects boosts associative memory and inference, but not memory for the objects themselves. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧵

pnas.org

Active linking through narratives facilitates associative inference | PNAS

In daily life, we often draw inferences about novel associations from prior experiences. This ability, associative inference, is thought to be a ke...

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Yongzhen Xie @doryyongzhenxie.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

My fMRI study from the Mack Lab (@drmack.bsky.social) is now published on JNeuro! Here, we look into how hippocampal subfields flexibly update category knowledge representations in the face of novel exceptions. Check out the article here: doi.org/10.1523/JNEU....

doi.org

Distinct Hippocampal Subfield Representational Shifts Underlie Category Exception Learning

When we encounter an exception to our prior category knowledge, such as a leaf-like butterfly that perceptually diverges from the butterflies we commonly see, we must update our knowledge to reconcile...

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Anna Schapiro @annaschapiro.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Very excited to share our new review on C-HORSE, our model of the hippocampus! We think there is very encouraging alignment between C-HORSE proposals and the extant empirical literature, though we also note plenty of areas for further model development. royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

royalsocietypublishing.org

Evidence for complementary learning systems within the hippocampus

Abstract. Decades of research have established the hippocampus as central to episodic memory, but growing evidence suggests that it also contributes to str

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

How do we update our predictions when our environment changes? The hippocampus rapidly integrates previously distinct sequences to support updated predictions. New work w/ @hannahtarder-stoll.bsky.social & @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social – part of the theme issue on hippocampal predictions!

royalsocietypublishing.org

The hippocampus rapidly integrates sequence representations during novel multistep predictions

Abstract. Memories for temporally extended sequences can be used adaptively to predict future events on multiple timescales, a function that relies on the

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Buddhika Bellana @buddhikabellana.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

New work on agency and memory by @xianl-explorer.bsky.social, Janice Chen, myself and others! Using choose-your-own-adventures, we found that agency doesn’t always improve memory. Instead, agency personalized memory ❄️ ❄️ — even when people read the same text. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A schematic image of all story paths in a choose-your-own-adventure story. Two paths are highlighted, diverging in the beginning my and end, but overlapping in the middle portion of the story.

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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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Ida Momennejad @neuroai.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

New work with Roberta Raileanu: A Compositional Framework for Open-ended Intelligence Open-ended intelligence is the capacity to adapt to novel problems & environments that are substantially different from those seen in training. But most models of open-mindedness don't have compositionality. 1/n

arxiv.org

A Compositional Framework for Open-ended Intelligence

Open-ended intelligence is the capacity to adapt to novel problems and environments that are substantially different from those in training. A mathematics of open-ended intelligence requires two pilla...

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peterdoohan.bsky.social @peterdoohan.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

How do brains plan actions towards goals? To get at this question we studied mice navigating complex mazes as goals changed on every trial 🧵 Work with @thomasakam.bsky.social @behrenstimb.bsky.social @kristorpjensen.bsky.social now on BioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Erica Busch @elbusch.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Our new paper is out this week in Nature Neuroscience! www.nature.com/articles/s41... We built a BCI that works with the brain's natural geometry — and we found that people could learn to play a video game with their brains in <1 hr of training. This efficiency is groundbreaking & here's why:

nature.com

Human learning of noninvasive brain–computer interfaces via manifold geometry - Nature Neuroscience

Busch et al. use nonlinear neural manifolds to help humans gain rapid control over a noninvasive brain–computer interface, allowing them to learn how to play a video game with real-time fMRI neurofeed...

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Alex Barnett @alexbarnett.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Happy to announce this work has been published www.nature.com/articles/s44... People can view the same event and recall it differently. Here we asked if two participants recall events similarly, where in the brain do they share event representations both at encoding and recall?

nature.com

Natural language processing captures memory content associated with shared neural patterns at encoding and retrieval - Communications Psychology

This study shows that greater similarity in recalled content was associated with stronger shared activation patterns at encoding and retrieval in prefrontal and temporal cortices.

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Cheng Xue @cxue.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Excited to share our new review in Trends in Neuroscience with Gouki Okazawa @gouki-okazawa.bsky.social : "The 'neat' and 'messy' in task-dependent neural geometry and computation" where we reviewed what we know about the 'task-manager' in the brain. A thread 👇

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

What is a psychological theory? Here's our take on this tricky and controversial question in this week's Experimentology chapter summary. Many things called "theories" in psychology aren't actually theories — they're frameworks. 🧵 experimentology.io

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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Thrilled to have this preprint out, from the amazing Zekun Sun! "Motor abstraction training generalizes to the refinement of specific movement patterns" In brief, across 8 experiments we found evidence of a causal role for abstract representations in motor learning www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Chris Baldassano @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

The final typeset version of this paper is online now! Check out the new analysis approach that Narjes developed to track changes in event structure at multiple timescales, allowing us to see how event dynamics in a film clip change with repeated viewing

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Doby Rahnev @dobyrahnev.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

What does it mean for cognition to be Bayesian? The view that cognition is Bayesian inference is often intended at Marr's computational level. In a new paper in Nat Rev Psych, @kaixue98.bsky.social and I formulate the "explicit-Bayes" hypothesis that lives at the algorithmic level. rdcu.be/ff1XA

rdcu.be

The explicit-Bayes hypothesis for cognition

Nature Reviews Psychology - It is often asserted that human cognition is Bayesian, but that broad claim is difficult to test in a falsifiable way. We suggest that researchers specifically assess a...

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Anna Schapiro @annaschapiro.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

We’ve got an exciting new thing to share! We have causal evidence (using TMR) that memory reactivation during sleep promotes abstract understanding of underlying structure, allowing transfer learning in a new domain with zero superficial feature overlap with the learned one.

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Judy Fan @judithfan.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

The Cognitive Tools Lab at Stanford (cogtoolslab.github.io) is recruiting two new research staff members to join in AY 26-27. Full-Time Lab Manager: forms.gle/UVwfx5wbY9Km.... IRiSS Predoc Researcher: iriss.stanford.edu/predoc/2026-.... Please share widely in your networks, thank you!!

cogtoolslab.github.io

about the lab – cognitive tools lab

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Jesse Rissman @rissman.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

🚨NEW PREPRINT (w/ Fleming Peck & Hongjing Lu) "Spontaneous emergence of context-dependent statistical learning in humans and neural networks" We are constantly predicting what will happen next. Yet the same cue can lead to different predictions depending on context. How might this work...? 🧵1/8

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Roselyne Chauvin @roselynechauvin.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

The 6x US memory champion – Nelson Dellis – can memorize a deck of cards in 40 seconds and knows the first 10K digits of pi. To figure out how, he let us peak inside his brain. Here is what we learned in our precision brain mapping study www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... youtube.com/shorts/MryMq...

youtube.com

how does his brain do it ? #neuroscience #memory #sport Nelson Dellis 6x US memory champion

YouTube video by Roselyne Chauvin

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tbiba.bsky.social @tbiba.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

I am excited to share my first paper, showing that episodic memory formation is theta rhythmic, is now published in Nature Human Behavior! Check it out here: rdcu.be/e6pzS. Thanks to my PI, Katherine Duncan, and to my collaborators for their support on this journey! Stay tuned for iEEG follow up 🧠

rdcu.be

Episodic memory encoding fluctuates at a theta rhythm of 3–10 Hz

Nature Human Behaviour - Biba et al. show that episodic memory encoding fluctuates at a theta rhythm of 3–10 Hz.

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

How do we balance external attention to the outside world and internal attention to our thoughts & memories? We review evidence that external and internal attention can compete, unfold concurrently, or cooperate! Loved working on this with @samversc.bsky.social & @tobiasegner.bsky.social!

psyarxiv.com

OSF

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tafazolisina.bsky.social @tafazolisina.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Thrilled that my paper is out in the @nature.com. We explored how the brain builds complex tasks by compositionally combining simpler sub-task representations. The brain flexibly performs multiple tasks by dynamically reusing neural subspaces for sensory inputs and motor actions rdcu.be/eRVUk

rdcu.be

Building compositional tasks with shared neural subspaces

Nature - The brain can flexibly perform multiple tasks by compositionally combining task-relevant neural representations.

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SueYeon Chung @sueyeonchung.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Our paper is out in @natneuro.nature.com! www.nature.com/articles/s41... We develop a geometric theory of how neural populations support generalization across many tasks. @zuckermanbrain.bsky.social @flatironinstitute.org @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social 1/14

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Lexi Decker @lexidecker.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

🧠 Hiring a Research Assistant/Lab Manager! Share widely! 📍 St. Louis | ⏰ Full-time We're launching the How We Learn Lab @WashU, studying attention, learning & memory interactions. Perfect for anyone interested in dev cog neuro who wants hands-on experience before grad school. deckerlab.com

deckerlab.com

How We Learn Lab

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Zach Reagh @zreagh.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

My lab is recruiting a postdoc and a full-time research technician to work on an NIH-funded project studying age-related changes in memory for naturalistic events. Behavior, fMRI, and blood-based biomarkers. 3+ years funding guaranteed. Postdoc: tinyurl.com/ykjfbnj8 Tech: tinyurl.com/2f2hw3f5

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Anna Schapiro @annaschapiro.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Really thrilled that this paper led by @neurozz.bsky.social is now published in its final version in @elife.bsky.social!! This is a memory-focused (as opposed to RL-focused) account of the detailed characteristics of forward and backward awake and sleep replay! elifesciences.org/articles/99931

elifesciences.org

A unifying account of replay as context-driven memory reactivation

A context-driven memory model simulates a wide range of characteristics of waking and sleeping hippocampal replay, providing a new account of how and why replay occurs.

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Casper Kerrén @ckerren.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

New preprint: Inference over hidden contexts shapes the geometry of conceptual knowledge for flexible behaviour. In this pre-reg study, our core claim was that we don’t just learn stimulus-reward. We infer hidden context and that inference re-wires attention and neural state space on the fly. 1/8

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Chris Baldassano @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Our new paper out in NHB! We started this back in @ptoncompmemlab.bsky.social's lab when I was a postdoc and Rolando was a grad student, showing that stable fMRI representations of places (learned in Rolando's custom-made VR world) provide the best anchors for later item learning

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Aidan Horner @aidanhorner.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

I wrote a thing on episodic memory and systems consolidation. I hope you all enjoy it and/or find it interesting. A neural state space for episodic memories www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition 🧪

sciencedirect.com

A neural state space for episodic memories

Episodic memories are highly dynamic and change in nonlinear ways over time. This dynamism is not captured by existing systems consolidation theories …

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Nina Rouhani @ninarouhani.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

I will be recruiting 🌟PhD students🌟 for my newish lab! If you're interested in learning & memory mechanisms applied to individual, interactive & collective behavior using computational modeling, real-world experiments and fMRI, email me! RTs much appreciated 🙏 rouhanilab.com

rouhanilab.com

Interactive Cognition Lab | USC

Interactive Cognition Lab at USC, led by principal investigator, Dr. Nina Rouhani.

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Soroush Mirjalili @soroushmirjalili.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

🧠🚨 How does the hippocampus transform the visual similarity space to resolve memory interference? In this new preprint, we found that the hippocampus sequentially inverts the behaviorally relevant dimensions of similarity 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.org

Hippocampal transformations occur along dimensions of memory interference

The role of the hippocampus in resolving memory interference has been greatly elucidated by considering the relationship between the similarity of visual stimuli (input) and corresponding similarity o...

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