Lauren Homann

🧠 CNS Trainees!
Join us Monday March 9 at #CNS2026 for our annual career panel:
“Survival to Sustainability: Building a Career That Lasts” featuring Drs. Morgan Barense, Caterina Gratton, Regina Lapate, and Ajay Satpute
🎮 Then, join us at the trainee social at GRETA Arcade Bar!
See you there!

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!

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!

🧠 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

Super excited to share my first preprint with Katherine Duncan and Morgan Barense (@barense.bsky.social) -- "Memory strength at reactivation, not memory age, governs prediction error driven updating of naturalistic event memory"! 🧠🎉https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/q9rkn_v1

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!

Thank you so much, Emily! ☺️

Thank you so much! ☺️

Thank you so much for your kind words! It truly means a lot to know that you appreciate our work! ☺️

Overall, retrieval doesn’t just strengthen real-world memories—it embeds them into semantic knowledge networks (a mechanism that may underlie the testing effect itself) without disrupting overall episodic integrity.

Thanks for reading! ✨ (7/7)

osf.io/preprints/ps...

3. Beyond strengthening explicitly reviewed content, retrieval practice did not affect broader episodic memory: memory for unreviewed details, overall accuracy, event organization (temporal & thematic), and subjective memory phenomenology were similar across groups. (6/7)

2. Retrieval promoted semantic integration of episodes:
participants incorporated more pre-existing semantic knowledge into their recall following retrieval (without a loss of episodic detail), suggesting that retrieval—like sleep—embeds memories into stable semantic knowledge networks. (5/7)

1. We provide the first demonstration of a testing effect for real-world memories: retrieval boosted memory for successfully-reviewed tour content more than restudy. This held across various types of episodic details (e.g., actions, sensory details, spatial info, newly-acquired facts, etc.). (4/7)

Methodology: Participants first experienced an immersive, episodically-rich staged tour event.

Then, participants either:
❓ Retrieved event details
📖 Passively restudied event details

Finally, two weeks after the tour, they completed a comprehensive battery of memory assessments.

(3/7)

The testing effect (retrieval practice > restudy for strengthening memory) is one of the most robust findings in memory research. But how does retrieval transform memory beyond mere strengthening? We leveraged the complexity of real-world memories to assess retrieval’s multidimensional impact. (2/7)

Proud to share the first preprint of my PhD w/ @barense.bsky.social & Mursal Jahed:

“Putting the testing effect to the test in the wild: Retrieval enhances real-world memories and promotes their semantic integration while preserving episodic integrity”

See thread! 🧵 osf.io/preprints/ps...

Moving Beyond Traditional Pathways in Cognitive Neuroscience The CNSTA career panel at CNS 2025 offered candid insights on skills development, risk-taking, and the value of nonlinear career paths.

Miss the #CNS2025 CNSTA Career Panel? We've got you covered! Check out this new guest blog post about the panel by @laurenhomann.bsky.social www.cogneurosociety.org/moving-beyon...
#science #neuroscience #careers #scicomm

CNS 2025 presentations from the Barense lab

If you're at #CNS2025 come check out our lab's Sunday line-up of posters from @catalinayang.bsky.social, @bryanhong.bsky.social, @nellymatorina.bsky.social, and @laurenhomann.bsky.social.

Flyer for CNS Trainee Discord community. Has a QR code and text... Summary: Join our new community on Discord, to connect, share, and grow alongside fellow CNS trainees (grad students and postdocs).

Join our new CNS Trainee Association community on Discord, to connect, share, and grow with fellow CNS trainees! Scan the QR code below to get started. 👇
And hope to see you all at #CNS2025 in Boston!

#TAMeG2025 is coming (our 10th anniversary!) May 27 feat keynote @charan-neuro.bsky.social and panel on SciCom & Disinformation, with Carrie Boyce of RCIScience, @schalllab.bsky.social & @barense.bsky.social (chair)

Call for presentations is open for GTA and southern ON trainees 👉 tameg.ca!

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 379, No 1913 Can't sign in? Forgot your password?

Episodic memory allows us to relive past experiences. What have we learned about episodic memory over the last 40 years of research?

These articles explore episodic (-like) memory and mental time travel in children, non-human animals, human adults, and artificial agents.

#PsychSciSky

1/ X's algorithm was changed in mid-July 2024 to systematically boost Republican-leaning accounts and Elon Musk's own account following his endorsement of Donald Trump, according to a newly released computational study of engagement from the Queensland University of Technology.⬇️

Doing good science is 90% finding a science buddy to constantly talk to about the project.

Become a LUMeNary! The Learning, Understanding, Memory, & Neurodevelopment Lab is growing! Visit our website to learn more about getting involved with research in our lab at Emory University (Atlanta, GA): thelumenlab.org

Our lab is recruiting a PhD student this cycle! Apps for Emory are due in exactly 2 weeks & many of my awesome colleagues are also recruiting including @pf-hitchcock.bsky.social @vanessabrown.bsky.social @jaredmedina.bsky.social & more! More info: psychology.emory.edu/home/graduat...

Thanks so much! 🙌

Im doing work on dynamic autocorrelation! Would love to be added if there’s room ☺️

By popular demand, Cognitive Psychology starter pack, part 2!

If you are a professional conducting research in cognitive psych: Comment here if you would like to be added.

If you are just interested in the topic: Open the starter pack and click "follow all" to join the convo!

go.bsky.app/RgVxacV

I've created a Black In Psychology Starter Pack to highlight the excellence of Black psychologists, #psychology trainees, psych organizations, & prospective students. Let me know, if you'd like to be added! 👨🏾‍🏫👩🏾‍🏫🧠

Help me spread the word by reposting 🙏🏽
go.bsky.app/KbrZvB8

#BlackSky #PsychSky #SciSky

Would love to be added if there’s still space, Allie! ☺️

OK folks, I've started an episodic memory starter pack. By no means a full list so reply below if you're an episodic memory nerd! go.bsky.app/2mtNK43