I’m very excited to share our new paper, led by the very talented Jack Bowler, a postdoc in the lab! www.nature.com/articles/s41... We all know that the way we learn something matters. But how does a training curriculum actually shape how the brain learns to solve a problem? a 🧵 1/N

Structured experience shapes strategy learning and neural dynamics in the medial entorhinal cortex - Nature Neuroscience

The authors use recurrent neural networks to predict how structured prior experience shapes neural dynamics as mice learn flexible timing strategies during complex context-dependent behavior.

nature.com

Check out our new Trends In Cognitive Science paper on mechanisms of cognitive flexibility - a broad collaborative piece with Florian Bähner, Ali Hummos, Sarah Oh, Kai Sandbrink, and Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying cognitive flexibility: a translational perspective

Cognitive flexibility allows us to adjust behavior when environmental rules change and to recombine prior knowledge in novel situations. However, the …

sciencedirect.com

I’m so happy to share that I’ll be starting as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Fall 2027! I'm incredibly excited to head back to the Midwest, get to work with an incredible group of colleagues, and live in beautiful Madison, WI. 🦡🎊

Hey, we’ve been studying mnemonic chunking in🐒! With @fkchiang89.bsky.social Here’s the rundown: 🧵 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Compression as a neural mechanism of mnemonic chunking in prefrontal cortex

Chiang and Rich show that macaques spontaneously chunk spatial targets in a self-ordered working memory task. dlPFC neurons compress chunked targets into lower-dimensional representations that are shi...

cell.com

We are searching for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position, with a research focus on developmental and/or social psychology. Please apply or forward to anyone who might be interested! facultypositions.stanford.edu/jobs/assista...

Assistant Professor, Psychology - Stanford University, California, United States

The Department of Psychology at Stanford University is seeking applicants for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position, with a research focus on developmental and/or social psychology. In addition ...

facultypositions.stanford.edu

After 3 years working with the great Wilma Bainbridge at UChicago, I’m thrilled to be heading home to Canada for a new chapter at the Rotman School of Management in Toronto! I’ll be bringing memorability into marketing, showing how brands can optimize their assets for cognition.

How does the brain continually adapt? Fresh in @natureportfolio.nature.com our super exciting collaboration with @mark-j-wagner.bsky.social showing that the cerebellum contextualises cortical dynamics enable multi-task learning: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Granule cells reorient cortical trajectories to separate contexts - Nature

Simultaneous imaging of premotor cortex and cerebellar granule cells in mice learning two skills in parallel shows that trajectories generalize in cortex but coherently reorient apart in granule cells...

nature.com

How can we design experiments that make computational models disagree? One section of our new @natrevneuro.nature.com Review with @kriegeskorte.bsky.social and @heikoschuett.bsky.social examines studies that used stimulus sets designed to elicit distinct predictions from competing models. 1/16

Psychological Science special issue call 📣 Ever had your research denigrated bc it's "only descriptive", "what's the mechanism though?" and "but what are the theoretical implications?" Now has come your time to shine. Send your best descriptive work! www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

Why do some goals spread across people and generations, while others emerge only transiently? We argue that human goals are both drivers and products of cultural evolution: our individual pursuits are shaped by our cultural environments, and the goals we pursue in turn reshape those environments.

www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/news/divisio...

Division of labour: study in Nature shows how the brain continually adapts to novel situations

dpag.ox.ac.uk

On behalf of the Motor Learning & Motor Control Conference (MLMC): 🔔 Official announcement! 🔔 We are pleased to announce MLMC 2026 -> Friday November 13th (Satellite Meeting to SfN) Abstracts due September 25th. See you in DC! motor-conference.org/openconf.php

Out now @natcomms.nature.com. how do deadlines shape effort processing? We show that deadlines cause us to seek high effort rather than avoid it. Why? Becease effort makes progress towards completing goals, making it valuable, a process coordinated by fronto-striatal computations.

Neural and computational mechanisms of effort under the pressure of a deadline - Nature Communications

People are effort-averse in most situations but can exert effort for little reward when progressing towards goals. Here, the authors show that under deadline pressure people become effort-seeking whil...

nature.com

Andrea Pisauro@andreapisauro.bsky.social · 4w ago

Under pressure? It may not be bad. We think of pressure when there is too much of it, but in the right doses it is what makes us reach our goals on time. That's the idea @brainapps.bsky.social & I developed in this paper finally in press at @natcomms.nature.com nature.com/articles/s41467-026-75987-6

Final work from my PhD is out as a preprint, my last project at Trento before moving to Western! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... In this work, we ask: how is food represented in visual cortex?🧵

Object dimensions underlying food representations in visual cortex

Recent work has revealed two food-selective areas in the lateral and ventromedial occipitotemporal cortex (OTC). These studies have shown that food selectivity in these regions cannot be explained by ...

biorxiv.org

Our task-switching paper is now out at Current Biology! www.cell.com/current-biol... We find that that our brains reset to a task-neutral state between trials, providing flexibility when the upcoming task is uncertain. RNNs also learn this strategy, but only when trained to switch tasks.

Tactile suppression during movement as optimal integration of somatosensory feedback across time www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #sensorimotor

Tactile suppression during movement as optimal integration of somatosensory feedback across time

When reaching for an object, tactile sensations from a sleeve sliding over the moving arm are often ignored, yet the computational principles governing this phenomenon remain unclear. Prevailing accou...

biorxiv.org

How the cerebellum separates related contexts—now out in Nature! Martha Garcia-Garcia led this tour de force, with theory from @somnirons.bsky.social & Michał Wójcik. Martha is on the faculty market, and I could not recommend her more highly. My lab is also recruiting! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited about new work from my CCN keynote (38m): youtu.be/v3J-vJfxhOE?... We often choose between Bayesian and neural net models of behavior. But what if there's a spectrum, and combining both makes better predictions? Introducing BBT w @akjagadish.bsky.social & Guangyuan arxiv.org/abs/2608.22154

Excited about a new paper (w @russellepstein.bsky.social): "Cognitive maps as a medium for thought", in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social! We discuss how maps are an important 'middle ground' rep. medium, and how they may interact with a 'language of thought'. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Cognitive maps as a medium for thought

Cognitive maps are essential for navigation, but to what extent are they involved in thinking more broadly? In this opinion article, we examine whethe…

sciencedirect.com

Excited to share our new preprint on how the cerebellum specializes for language even in the absence of contralateral neocortical inputs, with @aniladmello.bsky.social and our collaborators @evfedorenko.bsky.social, @gretatuckute.bsky.social, @hopekean.bsky.social! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/

🎊 Our study of 732 individual brain scans from 366 dyadic sessions found a home in @plosbiology.org! ✨ "Social interactions between people of same and different generations shape longitudinal changes in interpersonal neural synchrony, loneliness, and social connection”. ✨ doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Social interactions between people of same and different generations shape longitudinal changes in interpersonal neural synchrony, loneliness, and social connection

Loneliness affects health, but physiological mechanisms underlying benefits of intergenerational social interactions remain unclear, particularly how repeated encounters shape neural synchrony. This l...

doi.org

I have always believed that ideas from basic systems neuroscience could eventually help people. But for years that felt more like hope than reality. But look! This is one of the most personally satisfying papers my lab has produced because we’re getting there. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧪🧵 1/

We broke Weber's law. By manipulating the prior (ie the frequencies of small and large magnitudes), we changed how people's accuracy depended on magnitude. When large magnitudes were more frequent, subjects became more precise about them. This points to efficient coding, dynamically implemented.

Sam Gershman@gershbrain.bsky.social · 2w ago

@arthurpr4t.bsky.social has a new preprint with important results on a famous psychophysical law (Weber's law). It isn't, in fact, a law, because it can be broken. A more fundamental principle (efficient coding) shows when and why Weber's law holds true. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Update! This paper was just published at npj parkinson's disease. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Jonathan M Wood@jonathanwood603.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I am very excited to share this new pre-print that we just posted on bioRxiv! We tested individual components of the effort-reward trade-off in people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and neurotypical controls and found some surprising results! #neuroskyence #Sensorimotor #Neurorehabilitation

Excited that this work is finally out! It raises some interesting questions about the basal ganglia and the impact of Parkinson's disease.

Jonathan M Wood@jonathanwood603.bsky.social · 2w ago

Update! This paper was just published at npj parkinson's disease. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New preprint! 🎉 How can we measure how the nervous system knows, moment to moment, where the body is as it moves? We introduce a continuous tracking paradigm to measure the hidden dynamics of proprioception—revealing it is faster and more precise than vision during movement. tinyurl.com/yf297k53

Tracking the hidden dynamics of proprioception

Every movement unfolds with a simple question: Where is my body? The nervous system answers through proprioception - the sense of limb position (static position sense) and movement (dynamic propriocep...

tinyurl.com

Excited for the opportunity to investigate how stroke affects peripheral nerve signaling and, in turn, sensorimotor function. With an amazing transdisciplinary team, we hope to uncover how to effectively engage the peripheral nervous system after stroke. Thank you NIH NICHD!

I am recruiting a PhD student in sensorimotor neuroscience to join my lab, with a start date of January 2027. This position is fully funded. If you are interested, please send your CV and a brief letter of interest by email. Reposts appreciated.

New lab preprint, "Abstract Representations of Sensorimotor Transformations in Human Premotor Cortex." Led by @sanghoonkang.bsky.social , with Juliana Trach. We'd love any thoughts, feedback! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Looking for a postdoc in motor control / systems neuroscience? I'm seeking candidates to develop a Connected Minds Fellowship proposal with me at York University: $70K/yr for 2 years + benefits, plus an $8.5K/yr research allowance. Deadline: Sept 27, 2026. 🧵