Excited to share that my first-ever first-author paper (w/ @atabk.bsky.social @AngeliqueDelarazan @zreagh.bsky.social) is now out in PNAS! Building a story to link two objects boosts associative memory and inference, but not memory for the objects themselves. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧵

Active linking through narratives facilitates associative inference | PNAS

In daily life, we often draw inferences about novel associations from prior experiences. This ability, associative inference, is thought to be a ke...

pnas.org

Can you make your life feel “longer” in retrospect? Add a dose of change and novelty in the present to later expand memories of your past. Excited to share our work on how dopamine-related processing bends memory to reflect the passage of distinct events. newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/can...

I'll be giving a talk on psychedelics & memory via Zoom tomorrow. You can register for it here: open-foundation.org/events/onlin...

🚨NEW PREPRINT (w/ Fleming Peck & Hongjing Lu) "Spontaneous emergence of context-dependent statistical learning in humans and neural networks" We are constantly predicting what will happen next. Yet the same cue can lead to different predictions depending on context. How might this work...? 🧵1/8

I’m incredibly humbled and grateful to receive this award. I feel very lucky to do this work alongside brilliant mentors, thoughtful letter writers, and stellar colleagues and mentees. Whatever I’ve accomplished is really a reflection of the people I’ve learned from and worked with.

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation@sloanfoundation.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Congrats to the 126 early-career scholars awarded a 2026 Sloan Research Fellowship, whose creativity and innovation set them apart as the next generation of scientific leaders! Our #SloanFellows represent 7 fields and 44 institutions across the US and Canada. Full list: sloan.org/fellowships/...

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

How does cortisol tune brain networks to form strong emotional memories? Excited to share new work led by amazing former RA Flory Huang w collabs Rajita Sinha and @toddc.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Dynamic brain mechanisms supporting salient memories under cortisol

The stress-related hormone cortisol alters dynamic brain networks predicting memory and arousal to promote emotional memories.

science.org

New preprint alert! Cognitive maps are flexible, dynamic, (re)constructed representations #psychscisky #neuroskyence #cognition #philsky 🧪

I'm recruiting PhD students for my lab at Northwestern! I'm reviewing applications for the Department of Psychology for the Cognitive Affective Neuroscience and Clinical areas, due 12/1. 🧠 Come join the CATS Lab: nucatslab.com Learn about our latest research: iamh.northwestern.edu/research/res...

I will be recruiting 🌟PhD students🌟 for my newish lab! If you're interested in learning & memory mechanisms applied to individual, interactive & collective behavior using computational modeling, real-world experiments and fMRI, email me! RTs much appreciated 🙏 rouhanilab.com

Columbia Psych is hiring *two* junior faculty in Cognitive Science/Neuroscience this year! If you work on cognition (broadly defined), submit your application materials as soon as possible (review starts Nov 1). If you have questions you can reach out to me by email! apply.interfolio.com/175428

Thrilled to see this paper out! It's the culmination of a project begun in the depths of the pandemic with Sabrina Karjack and @zoengo.bsky.social . We continue our exploration of how children generalize when their episodic memory is not yet mature. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The dependence of children’s generalization on episodic memory varies with age and level of abstraction - Nature Communications

Children’s ability to generalize from episodic memories varies by both age and the level of abstraction. Here, the authors show that lower level generalization increasingly depends on episodic memory with age, whereas higher level generalization shows no such relationship.

nature.com

The MAC lab at Drexel is looking for a new post-doc to work on NIH-funded projects investigating the intersection of prior knowledge and long-term memory consolidation. Please pass along to any interested lab members! careers.drexel.edu/cw/en-us/job...

Careers at Drexel - Human Resources

careers.drexel.edu

Happy international dog day 🐕

Interested in how emotions surface in dreams across the night? In this new paper, Jessica Palmieri, @valentinaelce.bsky.social and I report about the “Nightly dynamics of emotional content in dreams.” doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

Stand up against extortion, oligarchs, and the destruction of this country. Stand up not only for UC, but also for all Americans and our universities. 💪 www.universityofcalifornia.edu/get-involved...

Stand Up for UC

We must stand together to protect our students, staff, faculty and our mission.

universityofcalifornia.edu

How do brain networks tracking past trauma react to stress in the future? Thrilled to share new work from the lab led by rockstar postdoc @felhardi.bsky.social with wonderful collab @dylanggee.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #psychscisky #neuroskyence

This is unfortunate: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u... I wrote to the president of Harvard. I hope other faculty will speak their conscience, even if it means more struggle ahead.

New review paper with Maverick Smith on improving memory for stuff people actually want to remember: doi.org/10.1177/0963...

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.”

These are the weak points. You know what to do. First thing tomorrow, use 5calls.org and raise hell.

Amazing opportunity! Bridget is the best 🌟

Bridget Callaghan@drbcallaghan.bsky.social · last yr.

The Brain & Body Lab at UCLA is hiring a Staff Research Associate to work on a productive and dedicated team under the NIMH funded Teen Bugs study - investigating brain-gut communication in teens. Send your best and brightest! jobs.ucla.edu/jobs/8072

So proud of @erinmorrow.bsky.social for writing this moving piece about the importance of science funding. She’s an inspiration and powerful force for change.

Erin Morrow@erinmorrow.bsky.social · last yr.

So grateful to be one of the 500+ early-career scientists returning to their roots this month. The SNAP team behind this campaign has been such a blast to work with! @snapcoalition.bsky.social Check out my piece in the Marietta Daily Journal, as well as other national coverage: bit.ly/3HXlfB4

Emotions create vivid and lasting memories - but how are those memories organized? We find that negative emotions fragment experience, disrupting the flow of memory. Reframing negative feelings also carves up experiences, but in a way that supports integration and wellbeing. osf.io/preprints/ps...

How does the brain stop thoughts? Find out in my article in @natrevneuro.nature.com with Subbu Subbulakshmi & Maite Crespo-Garcia www.nature.com/articles/s41... that integrates 25 yrs of psychology and neuroscience on this vital function.@mrccbu.bsky.social sky.social #neuroskyence #neuroscience

Brain mechanisms underlying the inhibitory control of thought - Nature Reviews Neuroscience

The capacity to prevent unwanted thoughts is important for cognitive function and mental health. Anderson et al. describe insights into the neural mechanisms of the inhibitory control of thought that ...

nature.com

New from our lab: your brain doesn’t just remember time - it bends it. We show that the dopamine system responds to natural breakpoints in experience, and this relates to more stretched memories of time. Blinking also increases, signaling encoding of new memories. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Dopaminergic processes predict temporal distortions in event memory

Our memories do not simply keep time - they warp it, bending the past to fit the structure of our experiences. For example, people tend to remember items as occurring farther apart in time if they spa...

biorxiv.org

🔎 In sum: Hippocampal ripples trigger a transition from compressed hippocampal codes to expanded cortical states that reconstruct past experiences. Great collaboration with @s-michelmann.bsky.social and @doellerlab.bsky.social! Read the full paper here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hippocampal ripples initiate cortical dimensionality expansion for memory retrieval

How are past experiences reconstructed from memory? Learning is thought to compress external inputs into low-dimensional hippocampal representations, later expanded into high-dimensional cortical acti...

biorxiv.org

My paper reviewing how different neurodegenerative diseases affect autonomic function was just published.

Nature Reviews Neuroscience@natrevneuro.nature.com · last yr.

Autonomic dysfunction in neurodegenerative disease — a Review by Mara Mather www.nature.com/articles/s41... @maramather.bsky.social #neuroscience

I'm looking for a new full-time research assistant ("junior specialist"). It's not quite "lab manager" because I have someone who takes care of the administrative tasks, and here I'm looking for someone to help us get research done! Info is below, please pass on to any talented candidates, thanks!

Dynamic Memory Lab_Jr Specialist_Ranganath

University of California, Davis is hiring. Apply now!

recruit.ucdavis.edu

Grateful to be gathering and hearing exciting science from the cog neuro community at #CNS2025! We’ve got new ideas to share: Sat 3p - poster A94 from Jean Ye Sun 5p - C147 from @zhoui.bsky.social Mon 10am - 📱symposium! feat @davidclewett.bsky.social, @barense.bsky.social, @liladavachi.bsky.social