Can neural networks model the human perception of geometric shapes? Maxence Pajot, Théo Morfoisse, Mathias Sablé-Meyer, Yair Lakretz, Stanislas Dehaene journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

Can neural networks model the human perception of geometric shapes?

Author summary Recent neural networks have achieved remarkable success across a wide range of visual tasks, often rivaling or surpassing human performance. Yet, it remains unclear whether these system...

journals.plos.org

📣New paper! How does the sleeping brain help us to integrate new experiences while managing memories from the past? For his PhD work, @sabbaspoor.bsky.social recorded hippocampal ensembles in freely moving monkeys and found something unexpected. 🧵1/n www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪🧠📈👩‍🔬#OpenAccess

Experience reorganizes content-specific memory traces in macaques - Nature Neuroscience

In macaques, old memories, relative to new ones, are supported by more stable and interconnected cell assemblies. New-biased and old-biased assemblies reactivate during overnight sleep and can sometim...

nature.com

Can we study MTL ripples non-invasively? New preprint! We show that source-resolved MEG tracks ripple-like activity during sleep that: • localizes to the MTL • follows the canonical SO–spindle hierarchy • matches an iEEG benchmark • indexes memory reactivation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Non-invasive tracking of ripple-like activity during human sleep using MEG

Hippocampal ripples are considered a key mechanism of sleep-dependent memory consolidation. In humans, however, their direct investigation has relied on invasive recordings from patients with epilepsy...

biorxiv.org

Excited to finally share our new paper in @natcomms.nature.com: Hippocampal ripples initiate cortical dimensionality expansion for memory retrieval www.nature.com/articles/s41... With @s-michelmann.bsky.social and @doellerlab.bsky.social

Hippocampal ripples initiate cortical dimensionality expansion for memory retrieval - Nature Communications

How past experiences are reconstructed from memory remains unclear. Here the authors used intracranial EEG to show that hippocampal ripples reshape the geometry of cortical representations, supporting...

nature.com

Sensing your body (‘Interoception’) is everywhere in theories of mental health. But when we tested how well hundreds of people sensed their heart and lungs, the link to symptoms was almost nowhere to be found. 💣 🚨New @natmentalhealth.nature.com paper 🚨🎉 asks why 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

A neural network model of free recall learns multiple memory strategies www.nature.com/articles/s42...

A neural network model of free recall learns multiple memory strategies - Nature Machine Intelligence

Li et al. show that recurrent neural networks optimized for free recall discover diverse, human-like memory strategies beyond classical temporal context models, with top models using an index-based me...

nature.com

Out today on @nature.com! Connecting neural specialization, population geometry, and their functional implications across the cortical hierarchy. So grateful for this beautiful and fun collaboration with @shuqiw.bsky.social, S Muscinelli, L Paninski, and @stefanofusi.bsky.social!

Rarely categorical, highly separable representations along the cortical hierarchy - Nature

Cortical circuits prioritize diversity over categorical structure, supporting a computational regime geared towards high-dimensional, highly separable neural representations.

nature.com

Join us at @mpicbs.bsky.social as a fully funded 4-year PostDoc (m/f/d) in Cognitive & Computational Neuroscience (Area: Functions of the Perirhinal Cortex). Excellent infrastructure with a leading scientific network. Apply by 17 August: recruitingapp-5218.de.umantis.com/Vacancies/44...?

Ever wondered how the hippocampal cognitive map is read-out? @changmin-yu.bsky.social @zilong-ji.bsky.social with Jake & John, show that, during navigation, theta sweeps indicate remembered goal-directions (cf. current/next movements or perceptual targets) 1/2 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🔔 Our new preprint is out! Here we asked whether sleep spindles - a hallmark NREM rhythm linked to plasticity and memory - changes how well latent working memory representations can be accessed after a nap.

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · last mo.

Sleep spindles enhance latent working memory representations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.26.734777v1

Really excited about this work with the awesome Will de Cothi & @shipleysj.bsky.social, out in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. We propose acetylcholine is an analogue of dopamine — tracking not reward prediction errors but state-transition prediction errors. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-026-01058-w

I am recruiting a postdoctoral researcher and a PhD student, funded by a new ERC grant. The grant focuses on the role of the hippocampus in visual perception, using 7T fMRI (hippocampal subfields, cortical layers) and MEG+iEEG. The intended start dates for both positions are in early 2027. 🧠🟦 1/3

Interested in human replay and solid methods? Jointly with @skjerns.de we're releasing a benchmark dataset with known ground-truth neural sequences in MEG & fMRI, for developing & validating replay methods. First test: existing methods show similar effect sizes, but room to improve shorturl.at/6TgIr

FASTIMAGES: Validating replay detection methods in human neuroimaging using a combined MEG and fMRI dataset

Studies in rodents and humans using invasive electrophysiology have established that neural replay is a ubiquitous phenomenon in the brain that is associated with a wide range of cognitive functions, ...

shorturl.at

1/11 Happy to share our TICS paper on using the flexibility of one of the most basic cognitive functions, perception, to understand one of the most complex cognitive dysfunctions, psychiatric conditions (also my first formal work in computational psychiatry 🎉) 📄: www.cell.com/trends/cogni... 🧵 : 👇

Perceptual multistability: a multifaceted window into brain dysfunctions

Perceptual multistability, observed across species and sensory modalities, offers valuable insights into numerous cognitive functions and dysfunctions. For instance, differences in temporal dynamics a...

cell.com

Trends in Cognitive Sciences@cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Online Now: Perceptual multistability: a multifaceted window into brain dysfunctions

This is terrible 😡 not because participant compensation is increasing, but because @joinprolific.bsky.social keeps getting worse. I have suffered poor support and serious mishandling of sensitive information (including one of our invoices being sent to a third researcher). Goodbye, Prolific.

Brynn Sherman@brynnsherman.bsky.social · 3mo ago

After noticing another (significant!) drop in data quality this morning, I saw that Prolific is now recommending that participants be paid $48/hr

Join us at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig as a fully funded 4-year postdoc position (m/f/d) in Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience (Area: Social Cognition). Excellent infrastructure with a leading scientific network. Apply by 13 July: recruitingapp-5218.de.umantis.com/Vacancies/44...?

🧠 When you watch a movie, your brain blends sight, sound, and speech into a single experience. Should models of the brain blend them too, or keep the senses separate until the very end? We built MIRAGE to find out. It sets a new SOTA for predicting whole-brain fMRI from movies. 🧵

Now out in Nature Neuroscience: "Fixation duration on natural scenes is explained by memory encoding not processing demand". www.nature.com/articles/s41... Our eyes don't linger because recognition is hard; they linger to remember. Let me take you on a quick tour. 🧵

Fixation duration on natural scenes is explained by memory encoding not processing demand - Nature Neuroscience

By combining magnetoencephalography and eye tracking, this study sheds light on why people fixate on some parts of natural scenes longer than others. Rather than visual complexity, fixation durations ...

nature.com

Can neural representations from different people be translated into a shared space without paired data? In our preprint, "Platonic Representations in the Human Brain: Unsupervised Recovery of Universal Geometry", with Rishi Jha and @fuentemilla.bsky.social, we test this using fMRI 🧵👇

🧠🚨 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...

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...

biorxiv.org

I'm proud to say we are releasing LAION-fMRI, a densely sampled 7T fMRI dataset of natural images, with very broad stimulus sampling for testing countless hypotheses and for deeply exploring brain representations. The dataset is now available at laion-fmri.hebartlab.com What does LAION-fMRI offer? 🧵

LAION-fMRI - a 7T fMRI dataset of human vision

LAION-fMRI (LfMRI / LAION MRI dataset): 5 subjects, 25,052 launch-release natural images, 165 acquired 7T fMRI sessions with single-trial GLMsingle betas, retinotopy, localizers, and diffusion.

laion-fmri.hebartlab.com

Hiring a postdoc to do something nobody has done: record oscillatory signals from the human olfactory epithelium in awake humans. PhD in neuroscience, biomedical engineering, or adjacent. Real electrophysiology experience: single-unit, intracranial, or peripheral. Olfactory background optional.

Now out in Nature Machine Intelligence @NatMachIntell “Adopting a human developmental visual diet yields robust and shape-based AI vision”: doi.org/10.1038/s422.... A wonderful case where brain inspiration improved AI. With @martisamuser.bsky.social, Radek Cichy and @timkietzmann.bsky.social .

New paper out in J. Neuro! We used MEG and pattern classifiers to ask: if a memory is reactivated in the brain, does that mean you'll recall it? Short answer: no. www.jneurosci.org/content/46/1... Read on for the details! [1/7] #neuroscience #memory

Alpha Oscillations Track the Projection of Reactivated Memories into Conscious Awareness

By definition, episodic memory is a conscious phenomenon. Memory traces reactivated by the hippocampus and reinstated in the sensory cortices need to enter conscious awareness for them to be re-experi...

jneurosci.org

Misinterpreting Electrophysiology in Human Cognitive Neuroscience, by Tzvetan Popov 👇👀🧠 ... in psychophysiological experiments relying on vision, EEG components relate to cognition indirectly through their more direct relationship with oculomotor action... onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Categorization is ‘baked’ into the brain — a Perspective by Lisa Feldman Barrett & Earl K. Miller @lisafeldmanbarrett.com @earlkmiller.bsky.social #neuroscience #neuroskyence www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Categorization is ‘baked’ into the brain - Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Categorization, the grouping of objects, living organisms, actions or events into equivalence clusters, is fundamental to adaptive behaviour. In this Perspective, Barrett and Miller discuss evidence t...

nature.com

Great stuff by @skjerns.de !

Simon Kern@skjerns.de · 4mo ago

Can we really measure replay in humans using MEG with current methods? In our most recent paper we simulated replay under realistic conditions via a novel hybrid approach with astonishing results. we're delighted that it has now been published @elife.bsky.social! elifesciences.org/articles/108...

1/N: Dear colleagues, I would like to share a new paper on the subiculum, part of my PhD with the Neural Computation Group @andrejbicanski.bsky.social @mpicbs.bsky.social . We present “A theory of subicular function and generalized vector coding” that we call Disco. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🔔PREPRINT: Sleep ripples drive single-neuron reactivation for human memory consolidation 1/9: How does sleep support human memory consolidation? To test this, we recorded hundreds of neurons in the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) across learning, wakefulness, and sleep. doi.org/10.64898/202...