Olivia Larson

Your Brain’s Memory of a Story Depends on How It Was Told Telling the same story in different ways can change the brain networks that the listener uses to form memories

Telling the same story in different ways can change the brain networks that the listener uses to form memories

Just Say No to Trump's Compact for Academic Extortion Yesterday, the University of Pennsylvania was one of nine targets of the Trump Administration's "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education." Through it, Trump asks once again for universitie...

Members of the Penn community: please sign this actionnetwork.org/petitions/ju...

I defended my dissertation! 🥹 I am incredibly grateful to Phil Gehrman, @annaschapiro.bsky.social, and Martha Farah for their mentorship over these six wonderful, whirlwind years! There are not enough !!!s in the world to convey my gratitude for all of the many others who supported me along the way!

The first chapter of my dissertation is officially published! 🎆🌺💤 We found that folks with depression show similar impairments in cognitive functioning after total sleep deprivation as non-depressed folks (and bounce back similarly after recovery sleep):

🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.jp...

Incredibly excited and grateful to share that I’ll be starting a lab at The Ohio State University this(!) fall! My lab will study human learning and memory, with related interests in sleep, stress, and time perception. More info soon, but do get in touch if you’re interested in joining!

Me editing a draft of a "methods" section that I myself wrote

New preprint! How do we integrate new information into prior knowledge? We find that existing knowledge enables rapid new learning but that interleaved replay during sleep promotes integration of new and old information. Modeling suggests a sleep context suppression mechanism.
osf.io/preprints/ps...

I'm in Seattle at #SLEEP2025! Come see me at poster 52 on Tuesday 6/10 at 11am! It's called "No Added Benefit of Targeted Memory Reactivation During Naps on Negative Memory Rescripting" because that is what we found!

Has Angelo’s become too big for Bella Vista? No Ninth Street institution commands the crowds that Angelo's Pizzeria does. Some neighbors say they are taking an outsize toll on Bella Vista.

pedestrianize the Italian Market! it's one of the biggest no-brainers out there—who wants to drive up 9th Street anyway?!

www.inquirer.com/food/angelos...

Grad Resources Encouraging and equipping graduate students for impact.

I just learned that there's a national graduate student crisis line - gradresources.org. Might be worth spreading the word as I'm pretty sure exactly *checks notes* zero grad students are doing well emotionally right now.

Did You Work on a Terminated NIH Grant? ProPublica Wants to Hear From You. The National Institutes of Health is canceling grants that are seen as conflicting with the Trump administration’s priorities. We want to hear from researchers who have been affected.

www.propublica.org/getinvolved/...

Trump and DOGE Propel V.A. Mental Health System Into Turmoil A chaotic restructuring order threatens to degrade services for veterans of wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Veterans Affairs facilities across the U.S., therapy and other mental health services have been thrown into turmoil amid the dramatic changes ordered by President Trump and pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Don't mess with our clocks!

We had a great crew this morning working on signs before they headed out to @standupforscience.bsky.social in Philly!

STEM-related activities account for 40% of the US GDP and are a main economic driver for Philadelphia.

Science makes America great.

Let’s goooo

#standupforscience

Are there any lists of which labs are hiring postbacs this year? With the IRTA program down, there are many more undergrads looking for positions! 🧪 🧠 #science #neuroscience #psychology

remember stuff like this when they tell you that diversity means a lowering of standards

Hi! I'm a political scientist who studies what makes advocacy effective (sent here by my psychologist spouse @tierneylorenz.bsky.social ). A phone call with the staffer dealing with the issue > letter you compose on your own >>>>> a form letter. Key: be unique + courteous + make effort.

Bad Sleep Lets Intrusive Thoughts Flood In Findings reveal the memory-related brain processes that generate unwanted thoughts when people are sleep deprived

Why do we suffer from more intrusive thoughts when we're sleep deprived? Find out in this SciAm article on our latest work by @rachelnuwer.bsky.social, featuring @zarabergstrom.bsky.social and @marwimber.bsky.social www.scientificamerican.com/article/bad-...

"Large language models surpass human experts in predicting neuroscience results" w @ken-lxl.bsky.social
and braingpt.org. LLMs integrate a noisy yet interrelated scientific literature to forecast outcomes. nature.com/articles/s41... 1/8

The Portable Mentor Cambridge Core - Psychiatry - The Portable Mentor

So excited! A donor has made The Portable Mentor totally and completely FREE for anyone!!!!!! No royalties, no sign up, just download any/all of the 30 chapters of professional development advice!!! HOORAY!!!!! Equal access for everyone!!!!

Check out the ToC!
www.cambridge.org/core/books/p...

We are extremely excited to announce Anna Schapiro from the University of Pennsylvania as the first keynote speaker of CCN2025!

Join us next August for the 8th CCN conference, on cognitive science, neuroscience, and AI. Details on paper submissions (both short & full) below!

Object Feature Memory Is Distorted by Category Structure Abstract. Memory systems constantly confront the challenge of capturing both the shared features that connect experiences together and the unique features that distinguish them. Across two experiments...

New paper out! Memory for object features is warped according to their role in a category, w/ features shared across category-mates misremembered as more similar. We explored the phenomenon in our NN model of the hipp. w/ @annaschapiro.bsky.social & @codydong.bsky.social doi.org/10.1162/opmi...

I pictured a mass of people running a 5k in scooby Doo costumes and wondered where to sign up

Are you #QueerinSTEM in the fields of #neuroscience or #psychology? Please fill out our survey if you haven't already.

We're close to 300 responders, but I know we can get an even better (and hopefully diverse) sample!

Also, please share and/or tag others (but don't out anyone).

#PrideInSTEM

Scientists as political advocates Science, both teaching and doing, is under attack. The recent US presidential election of a person and platform with anti-science bias exemplifies this. The study of climate processes and patterns and...

"continuing to do and teach science vociferously in the face of political attacks is doubly necessary now"

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Sleeping person with clouded dreams.

Do dreams serve a biological function?

If so, why do we forget most of them?

Here we propose a solution for this apparent paradox:

authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

How is it possible that AI can do so many things for me on my computer but every time I try to put a figure into a Word document it acts like I'm asking it to format my paper in 4D