Vivien

a black cat is sitting in the snow with the words still waiting below it . ALT: a black cat is sitting in the snow with the words still waiting below it .

Many things in the world move, and can even move behind other things. When will the cat reappear? To predict this, remembering the cat’s speed will likely help. But... how do people remember something like speed, which is defined by displacement over both (🤯) space and time? TWEEPRINT ALERT! 🚨🧵1/n

Congratulations 🥳🥳

Neural Subspaces Encode Sequential Working Memory, but Neural Sequences Do Not The neural mechanisms of multiple-item working memory are not well understood. In the current study, we address two competing hypotheses about the neural basis of sequential working memory: neural sub...

New preprint! 🎉 We investigate how the brain maintains multiple items in working memory, testing two competing hypotheses for sequential memory: neural subspaces vs. neural sequences.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Windows to the goal: Pupillary working memory signatures prospectively adapt to task demands https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.06.692784v1

Sensory reformatting for a working visual memory A core function of visual working memory (WM) is to sustain mental representations of recent visual inputs, thereby bridging moments of experience. This is thought to occur in part by recruiting early...

new paper in TICS officially out today. great learning from and writing with Anastasia, and super cool cover art from Prof. Pinar Yoldas.
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

New today in @Nature: your visual cortex contains touch-based body maps. bit.ly/VisualBodyMaps
Your brain transforms what you see into first-person, body-referenced codes: A previously unknown bridge between vision and touch.

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Esmeralda Hidalgo-Lopez, Isabel Noachtar, and Belinda Angela Pletzer:

N-back task revisited: Comparing the neural correlates of updating and interference control

doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

So many cool projects with super fascinating data! 😍

Hola #SfN2025,
Clayspace Lab is excited to share 4 new posters from our lab on Working memory and neural dynamics! 🧠

Come stop by at our poster boards or find us around to discuss cool science. Details in the ad below 👇!
@sfn.org

#Neuroscience #SfN25

🚀 New preprint alert 🚀

How easily can working memory create interference in long-term memories? Our new preprint, Interference Across Memory Systems: Disrupting Long-Term Memories Through Working Memory examines this
osf.io/preprints/ps...

w/ @sahcan.bsky.social Anna Lena Mantei, Daniel Schneider

Kiyonaga Lab: Cognitive Neuroscience at UCSD Saturday 11/15 (1-5pm): Zhuojun Ying (board EE8) Working memory demands influence the balance between detailed and gist-level representations during planning Sunday 11/16 (1-5pm): Vivien Chopurian (board LBP055) Shared and distinct cortical representations enable storage of multiple items in working memory Tuesday 11/18 (1-5pm) Yueying Dong (OO5) Flexible gaze reinstatement during working memory for natural scenes Tuesday 11/18 (1-5pm) Sihan Yang (OO3) Adaptive offloading: Visual working memory content is flexibly represented in hand and eye movements

The Kiyonaga Cognitive Neuroscience lab @ UCSD has four posters this year at #sfn2025 ! Come say hi!

Super excited to share a new preprint!

We asked a simple-but-big question:

What changes in the brain when someone becomes an expert?

Using chess ♟️ + fMRI 🧠 + representational geometry & dimensionality 📈, we ask:

1️⃣ WHAT information is encoded?
2️⃣ HOW is it structured?
3️⃣ WHERE is it expressed?

1/n

(1/4)
🧠 Did you know that kids remember time differently than adults? Our new preprint review w/ @drjeni-mdlab.bsky.social discusses the real implications for juvenile justice & why we need to ask about timing in ways that match kids' developing brains ⚖️

Paper: osf.io/preprints/ps...

The Computational and Cognitive Neural Sciences lab (ballardlab.org) at UC Riverside is recruiting psychology PhD students to join our team! Check out the flyer to learn about the lab and our stellar research community at UCR. Apply by 12/1!
drive.google.com/file/d/19m8i...

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 ...

🚨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...

🚀 We’re hiring - Join our lab 🚀

🔍 Hiring: PhD (75% TV-L) & Postdoc (100% TV-L)
🧠 fMRI, VR, EEG, modelling

We combine a range of cognitive neuroscience methods to study flexible behaviour.

📅 Start: Feb 2026 or later | ⏳ Apply by Nov 3!

More details:
tinyurl.com/ms3a9ajt

#CognitiveNeuroscience

Order-Selective Cells Tile Temporal Space and Predict Order Memory in Humans https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.24.683575v1

New preprint! What happens in the brain when people offload memories into external reminders? Using fMRI decoding, we found that the corresponding neural trace fades until it becomes statistically absent.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

🧵...

Memory recall errors reflect interacting sensory and mnemonic representations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.20.683560v1

Entorhinal grid-like codes for visual space during memory formation Nature Communications - Eye movements during scene viewing are tied to grid-like codes in the entorhinal cortex. Grid signals are specific to later remembered scenes, covary with activity in...

✨My first first-author paper is out✨
Entorhinal grid-like codes for visual space during memory formation in @natcomms.nature.com ➡️ rdcu.be/eLRm2
Big thanks to everyone ‪@isabellacwagner.bsky.social‬, @tobiasstaudigl.bsky.social, @olejensen.bsky.social, @doellerlab.bsky.social, @clauslamm.bsky.social

Mnemonic maps of visual space in human prefrontal cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.17.683147v1

Flexible Working Memory in the Peripheral Nervous System https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.26.678884v1

Sensory reformatting for a working visual memory A core function of visual working memory (WM) is to sustain mental representations of recent visual inputs, thereby bridging moments of experience. This is thought to occur in part by recruiting early ‘sensory’ cortical regions, via flexible fronto-parietal mechanisms. The nature of visual cortex activity during WM has been elusive, but new evidence suggests that early WM representations can transform from a sensory-like code into a format that is shaped by task context and optimized for behavior. Here, we review evidence for transformations in visual cortical WM coding, the various forms they take, and their functional importance. Visual cortex may be an active workspace during WM, where flexible and ‘good enough’ WM representations serve to interface with perception and action.

Online Now: Sensory reformatting for a working visual memory

Spatial attention and working memory are popularly thought to be tightly coupled. Yet, distinct neural activity tracks attentional breadth and WM load.

In a new paper @jocn.bsky.social, we show that pupil size independently tracks breadth and load.

doi.org/10.1162/JOCN...

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...

🧠🚨 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...

A parietal grid-like code rotates with cognitive maps but lags rapid behavioral transfer The neural grid code has been proposed to provide a mechanism for generalization and transfer of relational knowledge between situations enabling rapid adaptation of behavior in novel circumstances. H...

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

We’re recruiting a postdoctoral fellow to join our team! 🎉

I’m happy to share that I’ve opened back up the search for this position (it was temporarily closed due to funding uncertainty).

See lab page and doc below for details!

Looking for a PhD/postdoc in computational psychiatry? Look no further!
Ondrej is a great scientist and mentor and his lab is certain to be an exciting place to be ⚡️

We’re looking for a postdoc to join our Max Planck group in Germany some time in 2026. If you have computational and/or neuroimaging expertise, and are interested in questions intersecting perception and cognition, please reach out! I’ll also be happy to chat at the #Bernsteinconference this week.

Incredible study by Raut et al.: by tracking a single measure (pupil size), you can model slow, large-scale dynamics in neuronal calcium, metabolism, and brain blood oxygen through a shared latent space! www.nature.com/articles/s41...