What if much of human thought is navigation? 🧠 New open-access review: I argue that the DMN + hippocampal–entorhinal system form a domain-general engine for "mental navigation" across physical and abstract spaces (e.g. social, conceptual, and value). www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Ellen O'Donoghue
@eodonoghue.bsky.social
Postdoc in the Motivation & Memory Lab at CUBRIC, Cardiff University. I study how we flexibly learn about our environments, with particular interest in curiosity-driven exploration.
Many of you asked how we create those pretty whole-brain plots with the cortical outline. We just made it available as a Python package: pni-lab.github.io/quickbrain/
Excited to share our latest paper from the lab now out in BP:CNNI! 🌟Superstar postdoc @amarojha.bsky.social and I discuss individual differences in neurodevelopmental trajectories, highlight new work & share ideas for where we might go next! #neuroskyence #neuroimaging #PsychSciSky #CogDev #DevPsy
In this article, @ariellekeller.bsky.social and I argue how the field is well positioned to leverage recent advances in exposomics and personalized neuroscience to inform public policy and precision psychiatric medicine: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Fresh preprint! Reward Signals Drive Encoding of Reward-Item Associations During Motivated Learning osf.io/preprints/ps... We present evidence that mesolimbic activity during motivated encoding reflects source memory for rewards, which later guides goal-directed retrieval. 1/12
OSF
osf.io
What are children's *naturalistic* everyday experiences like? Nele's paper presents a crucial resource (100+h of 🎥 w/ annotations) that will help us to build the tools we need to study what it's like to be a child in the wild. 🙏to @jacobsfoundation.bsky.social @maxplanck.de @dfg.de for funding!
I am excited to share my first publication in Behavior Research Methods! 🚀 We’ve released ChildLens: 109 hours of open-access, annotated egocentric video/audio from children (ages 3–5). Paper: rdcu.be/fdfAI
Want a dataset to test ideas on neural basis of decision making or how areas interact as we make choices? Check out our data published today @rudebecklab.bsky.social. >16,000 single neurons from 22 anatomically confirmed areas in macaques performing a decision task. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Dataset of cortical and subcortical single neuron activity during value-based tasks in macaque monkey - Scientific Data
Scientific Data - Dataset of cortical and subcortical single neuron activity during value-based tasks in macaque monkey
nature.com
🔍 What happens when you give middle-schoolers unrestricted access to ChatGPT for science tasks? Findings from our new paper led by Rania Abdelghani w/ @koumurayama.bsky.social @celestekidd.bsky.social Hélène Sauzéon 🧵👇
I am excited to share my first paper, showing that episodic memory formation is theta rhythmic, is now published in Nature Human Behavior! Check it out here: rdcu.be/e6pzS. Thanks to my PI, Katherine Duncan, and to my collaborators for their support on this journey! Stay tuned for iEEG follow up 🧠
Episodic memory encoding fluctuates at a theta rhythm of 3–10 Hz
Nature Human Behaviour - Biba et al. show that episodic memory encoding fluctuates at a theta rhythm of 3–10 Hz.
rdcu.be
2026. Announcing ‘The Ctrl-Z Award’ to honor researchers who correct the scientific record centerforscientificintegrity.org/2026/03/10/a...
Announcing 'The Ctrl-Z Award' to honor researchers who correct the scientific record - The Center for Scientific Integrity
The Center for Scientific Integrity, the nonprofit organization behind Retraction Watch, is proud to announce the launch of The Ctrl-Z Award. This annual award is designed to recognize and celebrate s...
centerforscientificintegrity.org
My first-author review ‘Determinants of individual navigation ability’ is out in Nature Reviews Psychology, co-authored with the inspiring @hugospiers.bsky.social!!!! 🎉🧠 ➡️ rdcu.be/e7KxG #Neuroscience #Navigation @nature.com @natrevpsychol.nature.com @sfn.org @fens.org @ucl.ac.uk
Can humans & animals really use internal maps to take shortcuts? Tolman famously said yes - based largely on his Sunburst maze. Our new review & meta-analysis suggests evidence is far weaker than you might think. 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1111/ejn.... @uofgpsychneuro.bsky.social @ejneuroscience.bsky.social
Tolman's Sunburst Maze 80 Years on: A Meta‐Analysis Reveals Poor Replicability and Little Evidence for Shortcutting
In 1946, Tolman et al. reported that rats could take a novel shortcut to a goal after training on an indirect route, supporting the Cognitive Map theory. However, a review of subsequent Sunburst maze...
doi.org
We are hiring a new Ph. D. student on neuroimaging and/or computational modeling on motivation and emotion. Tübingen is a great place to pursue work on these topics!! uni-tuebingen.de/fakultaeten/...
PhD Position on computational modelling and neuroscience (m/f/d)
uni-tuebingen.de
Your stomach called – your striatum picked up! But does this actually happen in humans? Using simultaneous dopamine PET/fMRI, we show that the gut hormone ghrelin helps the brain adjust motivation to current metabolic need. Here’s what we found👇 Preprint: shorturl.at/pq4A3 #neuroskyence #🩺
New paper! Associative learning mechanisms are often overlooked in studies of "complex" cognitive processes. Here, we examined how they participate in humans' and pigeons' task-switching. psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-... (see also osf.io/3265r/files/... for the accepted version!)
New article by @jaquent.bsky.social and co: Graded encoding of spatial novelty scales in the human brain www.nature.com/articles/s41...
1/4 Cockatoos are winning the trash can war against Australians Human motivation to protect them falls five times faster than cockatoos' motivation to open them, and increasing protections makes cockatoos better at it. (paper) royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...
Job alert! Fully funded PhD position on the link between curiosity and cognition in lemurs at our long-term field site Kirindy Forest in Madagascar @kirindy.bsky.social & @primatenzentrum.bsky.social. This project is part of @rtg2906-curiosity.bsky.social. Apply here: www.dpz.eu
New paper! Brains stretch representations along task-relevant dimensions. Spike timing is important. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroscience
Adaptive stretching of representations across brain regions and deep learning model layers - Nature Communications
How the brain adapts its representations to prioritize task-relevant information remains unclear. Here, the authors show that both monkey brains and deep learning models stretch neural representations...
nature.com
A beautiful summary of our paper! Thank you @neurosock.bsky.social
The hippocampus is not a library, it is a simulation engine. HPC is known for storing maps of the environment but not so known for generating planned trajectories. This paper proposes that recurrence in CA3 is crucial for planning. A🧵with my toy model and notes: #neuroskyence #compneuro #NeuroAI
New preprint alert! Cognitive maps are flexible, dynamic, (re)constructed representations #psychscisky #neuroskyence #cognition #philsky 🧪
OSF
osf.io
Stress drives the hippocampus to prioritize statistical prediction over episodic encoding https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.25.683838v1
🚀 New paper! We just took a major step in understanding how architecture shapes cognition. Our paper shows that something as simple as corners in rooms or corridors can shift canonical spatial attention cueing costs. Key method? Mobile Brain/Body Imaging combined with VR! bit.ly/47m6ssV
Turning corners in built environments shifts spatial attention costs
Human attention is typically studied under static laboratory conditions, yet everyday cognition unfolds during active interactions with the built envi…
bit.ly
World's largest rays may be diving to extreme depths to build mental maps of vast oceans
World's largest rays may be diving to extreme depths to build mental maps of vast oceans
Many marine species are no strangers to the depths of the oceans. Some animals, like certain sharks, tuna, or turtles, routinely perform extreme dives, whereas for other species, such behavior has…
phys.org
The work with bats on barren, 7-acre Latham Island was Nachum Ulanovsky’s most complex undertaking yet. By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/neuroetholog...
So excited that our first major empirical @themanybirds.bsky.social paper is now out in @plosbiology.org! Leading this big team science project, with our excellent core leadership team, is a labour of love for me, delighted to see our hard work over the past 4 years has reached this milestone!
🐦 Exciting news! Our new paper is out in PLOS Biology: “A large-scale study across the avian clade identifies ecological drivers of neophobia.” Led by the #ManyBirds Project - 129 researchers, 82 institutions, 24 countries 🌍 🔗 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... @themanybirds.bsky.social
Me too! 😊 Excited to see what we find -- thanks so much to @marinabazhydai.bsky.social, @pci-regreports.bsky.social, and the reviewers for their thoughtful handing of the process.
Really looking forward to the Stage 2 Registered Report of this exciting upcoming study on curiosity by @eodonoghue.bsky.social @mjgruber.bsky.social @pyoudeyer.bsky.social @yanafandakova.bsky.social - recommended by @pci-regreports.bsky.social
Please repost! We're looking for a PhD student to join us on a project exploring how ADHD is linked to greater curiosity. The PhD student will be based across Cardiff University and the University of Bath working with @ggoclowska.bsky.social , Kate Langley, and me as part of a collaborative team.
Is ADHD linked to greater curiosity? How? Why? We (with @mjgruber.bsky.social and Kate Langley) are seeking a PhD candidate interested in exploring this fascinating question. This psychology/neuroscience project will be based in Cardiff and Bath. Please repost and email inquiries. lnkd.in/dGEcnxdZ
For all who didn't make it to the Cheltenham Science Festival this year, here is the recent BBC Radio 4 All in the Mind episode on the Psychology of Curiosity. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
BBC Radio 4 - All in the Mind, The Psychology of Curiosity at Cheltenham Science Festival
Claudia Hammond, Major Tim Peake and panel discuss the psychology of curiosity.
bbc.co.uk
Very much looking forward to today's BBC Radio 4’s All in the Mind event about the Psychology of Curiosity at the Cheltenham Science Festival, together with astronaut Tim Peake. This will be fun! www.cheltenhamfestivals.org/events/all-i...
Interested in a study to help us understand coping strategies in autism, ADHD, Learning Disability, Social Anxiety, Depression, and Tic Disorder? 🧵 👇 For more information about this study: www.azrieli-anc.com/coping-study...