Is the concept of “category-selectivity” holding the field back in understanding high-level visual cortex? Detailed discussion in our published perspective piece and accompanying commentaries:
Are episodic and semantic memory really that different? Using closely matched tasks, a new study found no substantial neural differences between recalling personal experiences and general knowledge: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
This paper had a pretty shocking headline result (40% of voxels!), so I dug into it, and I think it is wrong. Essentially: they compare two noisy measures and find that about 40% of voxels have different sign between the two. I think this is just noise!
Omg!!!
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Meet up with us to collaborate and share your science journey: from the questions that drive your work to the breakthroughs that inspire you.
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And share with your science friends!
Memory problems will change how you see the world...literally 👀
Across two new papers, we examined the eye movement patterns of younger adults, older adults, individuals with mild cognitive impairment, and amnesic cases.
1/5
The brain represents the world around us as a series of neural states - stable patterns of activity that change as we move from one event to the next.
New paper by @selmalugtmeijer.bsky.social showing that neural states get longer as people age. #PsychSciSky
nature.com/articles/s42003-025-08792-4
50-day free share link: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lpYXivP7S...
Regular link:
doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
Collab with @fnim-lab.bsky.social 🧠
New paper alert! 🚨 We show that age-related neural dedifferentiation in scene-selective cortex is tied to changes in eye movements. Using simultaneous fMRI + eye-tracking, we found that younger adults’ fixations covary with scene specificity, but this link weakens with age.
Link in post below 👇
Scatter plots showing the strength and direction of any relationships between volume and reinstatement effects in the parahippocampal, medial, and occipital place areas.
I'm thrilled that my first first-author paper in @fnim-lab.bsky.social is now out!
We found that whole-brain cortical volume predicted the strength of neural reinstatement of scene information in the parahippocampal and medial place areas (PPA & MPA in the figure below). (1/2)
Google's Gemini AI tells a Redditor it's 'cautiously optimistic' about fixing a coding bug, fails repeatedly, calls itself an embarrassment to 'all possible and impossible universes' before repeating 'I am a disgrace' 86 times in succession
I'll admit, I was skeptical when they said Gemini was just like a bunch of PhDs. But I gotta admit they nailed it.
Mapping cerebral blood perfusion and its links to multi-scale brain organization across the human lifespan journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
We built the simplest possible social media platform. No algorithms. No ads. Just LLM agents posting and following.
It still became a polarization machine.
Then we tried six interventions to fix social media.
The results were… not what we expected.
arxiv.org/abs/2508.03385
![What do representations tell us about a system? Image of a mouse with a scope showing a vector of activity patterns, and a neural network with a vector of unit activity patterns
Common analyses of neural representations: Encoding models (relating activity to task features) drawing of an arrow from a trace saying [on_____on____] to a neuron and spike train. Comparing models via neural predictivity: comparing two neural networks by their R^2 to mouse brain activity. RSA: assessing brain-brain or model-brain correspondence using representational dissimilarity matrices](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:e6ewzleebkdi2y2bxhjxoknt/bafkreiav2io2ska33o4kizf57co5bboqyyfdpnozo2gxsicrfr5l7qzjcq)
What do representations tell us about a system? Image of a mouse with a scope showing a vector of activity patterns, and a neural network with a vector of unit activity patterns Common analyses of neural representations: Encoding models (relating activity to task features) drawing of an arrow from a trace saying [on_____on____] to a neuron and spike train. Comparing models via neural predictivity: comparing two neural networks by their R^2 to mouse brain activity. RSA: assessing brain-brain or model-brain correspondence using representational dissimilarity matrices
In neuroscience, we often try to understand systems by analyzing their representations — using tools like regression or RSA. But are these analyses biased towards discovering a subset of what a system represents? If you're interested in this question, check out our new commentary! Thread:
Delighted to share our latest review in Nature Reviews Neuroscience!
We examine the growing evidence that vascular dysfunction plays a key role in cognitive decline in ageing and dementia, and argue that preserving/restoring CBF should be central to future therapies.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
"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
We had a fascinating conversation with Dr. Louis Renoult (@renoultlouis.bsky.social) about all things memory! Here’s a preview of what we discussed and stay tuned for the full release of the episode later this week!
Apply for the opportunity to serve on JNeurosci’s Early Career Researcher Advisory Board to get more involved in scientific publishing and advocate as an early career researcher.
Learn more and submit your application by July 25, 2025, 5pm ET: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/ecr-board-applications
1/11 Excited to share our @Naturestudy led by @leonooi.bsky.social @csabaorban.bsky.social @shaoshiz.bsky.social
AI performance is known to scale with logarithm of sample size (Kaplan 2020), but in many domains, sample size can be # participants or # measurements...
doi.org/10.1038/s415...
New press on our study linking the locus coeruleus to memory formation 🔵: newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/bra... .
“…at a time when legislation promises ‘big and beautiful change,’ it turns out one of the brain’s smallest players may have the biggest impact on how we understand and remember our lives.”
JNeurosci’s Early career researcher (ECR) Advisory Board just opened a call for applications (due July 18 at 5pm ET). Join our team for a unique opportunity to serve the ECR community and advocate for ECR needs in scientific publishing: www.jneurosci.org/content/ecr-...
@sfnjournals.bsky.social
🧠 Paper out!
We investigated how hippocampal and cortical ripples support memory during movie watching. We found that:
🎬 Hippocampal ripples mark event boundaries
🧩 Cortical ripples predict later recall
Ripples may help transform real-life experiences into lasting memories!
rdcu.be/eui9l
Despite recent criticism from Quiroga to our claim that Concept Neurons emerge from Conjunctive Coding Neurons we claim: “And yet, the hippocampus codes conjunctively!”.
We hope it sparks a smile (and maybe a few debates).
Read here: tinyurl.com/3ycv3vj2
A very cool follow-up on one of the first studies I did with @fnim-lab.bsky.social. Older adults do not gate task-irrelevant information during episodic retrieval. New data reveal that this is not due to age differences in memory strength, but may instead reflect a decline in inhibitory control.
*GASP* !!! Can't wait to get these.
Your brain doesn’t just passively track time ⏳ - it structures it.
In @Science.org we show that activity in 🧠 memory circuits (LEC) drifts constantly, but makes sharp jumps at key moments, segmenting life into meaningful events. (1/2)
👉 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Drumroll... The SPM team will announce that SPM is now fully accessible from Python! 🐍 Learn more about SPM-Python at the SPM roundtable event (Friday, 1pm) and poster number 1841 at #OHBM2025. Try the beta for yourself at github.com/spm/spm-python [2/7]
New preprint & OA dataset from the lab 🥳
An open dataset of cerebral tau deposition in young healthy adults based on [18F]MK6240 positron emission tomography
by Jack Lam and a terrific team of colleagues at the Neuro, Douglas and UCL
▶️ pdf doi.org/10.1101/2025...
▶️ bids osf.io/znt9d
What shapes the topography of high-level visual cortex?
Excited to share a new pre-print addressing this question with connectivity-constrained interactive topographic networks, titled "Retinotopic scaffolding of high-level vision", w/ Marlene Behrmann & David Plaut.
🧵 ↓ 1/n
My latest Aronov lab paper is now published @Nature!
When a chickadee looks at a distant location, the same place cells activate as if it were actually there 👁️
The hippocampus encodes where the bird is looking, AND what it expects to see next -- enabling spatial reasoning from afar
bit.ly/3HvWSum
