Yining Ding

We only experience time moving forward. But memory can both predict what comes next and reconstruct what must have happened before.

In a new @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social preprint, we show how hippocampal development enables this flexible representation of time 🧵

My first-author review ‘Determinants of individual navigation ability’ is out in Nature Reviews Psychology, co-authored with the inspiring @hugospiers.bsky.social!!!! 🎉🧠

➡️ rdcu.be/e7KxG

#Neuroscience #Navigation @nature.com @natrevpsychol.nature.com @sfn.org @fens.org @ucl.ac.uk

We show that synesthesia is sensory and automatic in nature: the pupil scales with the brightness of experienced synesthetic colors. doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
Now in its new dress @elife.bsky.social (convincing & valuable in round 1).
If anyone wants to pick up the method, happy to share & explain!

If you are at #CNS2026 and are interested in hierarchical structures in event segmentation and "neural state segmentation," come and chat with me at poster A111 this afternoon from 3-5pm :)

Poster Session A #111: "Neural State Segmentation in Naturalistic Goal-directed Activities" 🧠🎞️

Excited to announce my first postdoc project at @UChicago with @WilmaBainbridge is now published in PNAS! Using computer vision and gen AI, we engineered memorable and forgettable symbols, showing memory can be optimized with data-driven visual design.

www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Every time you experience something new, your brain faces a decision: Should it update an existing memory or create a new one?

In our new paper in @sfnjournals.bsky.social #JNeurosci, we isolate that exact decision, moment-by-moment during learning 🧵

the human hippocampus receives convergent input from multiple sensory systems, yet we lack a basic understanding of how this structure integrates across senses.

we tackle this problem in our new preprint!

paper: doi.org/10.64898/202...

w/ Aryan Agarwal, @yannanzhu.bsky.social, & Nick Turk-Browne

1/ 🚨 New preprint

Key Moments Scaffold the Semantic Structure of Narratives

Using spoken recall and annotations from three naturalistic datasets with topic modeling, we ask: which parts of a narrative contribute most to its semantic structure and subsequently memory?

Preprint: osf.io/dcfvw

🚨 Spoiler Alert: Using a narrative reading paradigm, we found that semantic knowledge and hierarchical event structure can scaffold temporal order memory, sometimes predictably overriding the disruptive effects of event boundaries!

Excited to share our paper (with @jzacks.bsky.social), now out in JEP:LMC!

Event boundaries sometimes disrupt temporal order memory in list-based paradigms—but what happens in narratives with more complex structures that better resemble real life?

✨ Link: psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-...

The neural basis of imagination: An evolutionary perspective The study of imagination has progressed due to its operationalization through a variety of behavioural tasks, initially designed for human participant…

Hot take: the hippocampus isn't actually "evolutionarily ancient" and its not helpful to think of it as such.

The full argument for this take is right here (but you need to scroll down to sections 5-6):
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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.

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 🧠

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!

We've posted a new fMRI study of semantic relations (has-part, is-a, made-of, etc.), a key aspect of language. We find that relations are represented in the same brain regions as are other semantic concepts, though voxels tend to be selective for only one relation or another.
doi.org/10.64898/202...

Congrats Danielle!!!

What episodic memory reveals about the default mode network osf.io/preprints/ps...

Adaptive episodic memory: how multiple memory representations drive behavior in humans and nonhumans | Physiological Reviews | American Physiological Society Episodic memory is a declarative long-term memory of a specific past experience. As such, it is multifaceted, encompassing both the objective and subjective components of that experience. These components can be flexibly represented at different levels of granularity, from precise, context-specific details to generalized, gistlike representations. In this review, we suggest that 1) multiple representations of an episodic memory at different levels of granularity are simultaneously encoded into a memory trace and 2) the relative weighting of these representations determines the extent to which a memory is reconstructed or reproduced at retrieval. We propose that this representational flexibility drives adaptive behavior by prioritizing reconstruction or reproduction depending on the age of the memory, its relationship to prior knowledge, current attentional goals or task demands, and individual differences. Drawing on research in humans and nonhuman animals, we show a close correspondence between psychological and neural representations of a memory across encoding, consolidation, and retrieval. Specifically, we discuss how hippocampal activity in humans and engram formation and activation in rodents support the reproduction of detailed memory representations, whereas schema formation across species, mediated by the medial prefrontal cortex, facilitates reconstruction and generalization to guide behavior. Finally, we consider how species- and individual-level differences shape episodic memory representations. By integrating findings across species, we illustrate how the correspondence between neural and psychological representations enables multiple memory representations to balance stability and flexibility, ultimately driving adaptive behavior.

How do memories guide behaviour?

Multiple memory representations, from detailed to gist-like, let us flexibly reconstruct or reproduce past experiences to behave adaptively across species.

Now out in Physiological Reviews with Morris Moscovitch, Melanie Sekeres & @brianlevine.bsky.social!

Excited to share a new paper spearheaded by the wonderful @baror-shira.bsky.social:
tinyurl.com/bd8xdcum
@erc.europa.eu @nathumbehav.nature.com

We test the link between serial dependence (as an index of continuity) and event boundaries (indexing segmentation). A few key findings in the thread:

New preprint by @sarahehenderson.bsky.social. The *real* blood, sweat, and tears of her PhD - trying to develop an intervention to improve episodic memory in older adults under naturalistic conditions.

"Event tagging" is simple, but holds real promise. #PsychSciSky #memory
doi.org/10.31234/osf...

1/7 Can infants recognise the world around them? 👶🧠 As part of the FOUNDCOG project, we scanned 134 awake infants using fMRI. Published today in Nature Neuroscience, our research reveals 2-month-old infants already possess complex visual representations in VVC that align with DNNs.

Passage of time in the brain, in the mind, both?

Commentary on @lapate.bsky.social recent work
#drift #fmri #human #time
Please,👇 if we missed relevant observations in the field!

w/ @vigano.bsky.social @beneuroscience.bsky.social & R. Bordas
@sfnjournals.bsky.social
@brainthemind.bsky.social

Nine subcortical/cerebellar atlases included in the subcortex_visualization Python package (and subcortexVisualizationR package in R). The atlases are depicted in two-dimensional vector graphic format.

The extended version of my thesis procrastination project/subcortex visualization package is out now in both Python and R, now that I’ve graduated 🤠 This figure shows the 9 atlases included (and counting)!

Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Website: anniegbryant.github.io/subcortex_vi...

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Awake Infants: Insights From More Than 750 Scanning Sessions Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in awake infants has the potential to reveal how the early developing brain gives rise to cognition and behavior. However, awake infant fMRI poses signifi....

Awake infant fMRI offers a rare window into early brain and cognitive development. In a new paper out now in Infancy, we leverage data from hundreds of infant scans from the Saxe and Turk-Browne Labs to reveal what factors drive scanning success — and how future studies can maximize data retention!

Great work by Roni Tibon (not on BlueSky) - surprising that negligible difference in fMRI correlates of semantic vs episodic retrieval?

We can use past experience to make predictions about the future. How do predictions affect our memory for the present? My own work (tinyurl.com/42kyukch) suggests that predictions compete with memory. But other recent work (tinyurl.com/2ekd4wr6) found the opposite--cooperation! What's going on here?

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

🧠 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

Can reward improve memory for what came before it? 🌟

In a registered report with @duncanlabuoft.bsky.social & @megschlichting.bsky.social, we reconcile mixed findings from past studies: reward retroactively boosts associative—but not item—memory, and only in reward-sensitive individuals!

Neural signatures of engagement and event segmentation during story listening in background noise Speech in everyday life is often masked by background noise, making comprehension effortful. Characterizing brain activity patterns when individuals listen to masked speech can help clarify the mechan...

Finally out: www.eneuro.org/content/earl...

fMRI during naturalistic story listening in noise, looking at event-segmentation and ISC signatures. Listeners stay engaged and comprehend the gist even in moderate noise.

with @ayshamota.bsky.social @ryanaperry.bsky.social @ingridjohnsrude.bsky.social

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