Super excited to be back @cogcompneuro.bsky.social in NYU - this year presenting new exciting work from Project Simsom with @camerontellis.bsky.social, Dan Yamins and the team. Are we ready to build an AI model of infant development? We think so ... come check it out Thursday 10:30 E39 👶🤖

Our cerebellum+RL paper is now out in the Journal of Neuroscience! "The Human Cerebellum Encodes Temporally Sensitive Reinforcement Learning Signals" @sfnjournals.bsky.social @sfn.org www.jneurosci.org/content/46/2...

The Human Cerebellum Encodes Temporally Sensitive Reinforcement Learning Signals

In addition to supervised motor learning, the cerebellum also supports nonmotor forms of learning, including reinforcement learning (RL). Recent studies in animal models have identified core RL signal...

jneurosci.org

From cutting-edge research to thought-provoking discussions, there’s something for everyone in the #ICIS2026 programme. Attend the Neuro session with Nick Turk-Browne and @drkoraly.bsky.social if you are interested in the workings of the brain! 🧠🧒

With so many eyes on Pittsburgh during the NFL Draft this weekend, it feels like a fitting moment to share some personal news — I'm excited to be joining the Department of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in Fall 2027!

Come check out the lab's work at CDS!

Why can't you remember being a toddler? Or can you? Nice feature in Time of our lab's work on infantile amnesia at @tcddublin.bsky.social Also of the labs of @sarahdpower.bsky.social at MPI Berlin, @franklandlab.bsky.social at Sick Kids, and Nick Turk-Browne at Yale. time.com/7380496/why-...

Why You Can’t Remember Being a Toddler

This form of amnesia is almost universal, but has long been overlooked.

time.com

Are you attending @cogdevsoc.bsky.social 2026? Come join us for an afternoon pre-conference workshop on motivation in development! We'll bring together developmental, educational, and computational perspectives to ask: Can we build a unified account of motivation across the lifespan? ✨

I am very excited to be presenting our work using awake infant fMRI and developmentally inspired deep neural networks to better understand the visual features that the developing brain encodes infants view objects at #CNS2026 in Vancouver this week!

Tasks include watching movies, like Moana, while tracking brain development every 2 weeks A limitation of the work is that it's so far an n of 1, Ellis' daughter #CNS2026 7/ @camerontellis.bsky.social

We show that synesthesia is sensory and automatic in nature: the pupil scales with the brightness of experienced synesthetic colors. doi.org/10.7554/eLif... Now in its new dress @elife.bsky.social (convincing & valuable in round 1). If anyone wants to pick up the method, happy to share & explain!

Christoph Strauch@cstrauch.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Synesthetes claim sensory experiences, such as seeing color when reading or hearing a (black) number. 
But how genuine are these reports and sensations? We introduce a rather direct measure of synesthetic perception: Synesthetes’ pupils respond to evoked color as if it was real color #vision! 👁️🎨🧪

the human hippocampus receives convergent input from multiple sensory systems, yet we lack a basic understanding of how this structure integrates across senses. we tackle this problem in our new preprint! paper: doi.org/10.64898/202... w/ Aryan Agarwal, @yannanzhu.bsky.social, & Nick Turk-Browne

1/7 Can infants recognise the world around them? 👶🧠 As part of the FOUNDCOG project, we scanned 134 awake infants using fMRI. Published today in Nature Neuroscience, our research reveals 2-month-old infants already possess complex visual representations in VVC that align with DNNs.

Congratulations to @lillianbehm.bsky.social, Nick Turk-Browne, and a huge team for putting together this paper (out today) on lessons from a decade of attempts to study awake infants with fMRI: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Awake Infants: Insights From More Than 750 Scanning Sessions

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in awake infants has the potential to reveal how the early developing brain gives rise to cognition and behavior. However, awake infant fMRI poses signifi...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Awake infant fMRI offers a rare window into early brain and cognitive development. In a new paper out now in Infancy, we leverage data from hundreds of infant scans from the Saxe and Turk-Browne Labs to reveal what factors drive scanning success — and how future studies can maximize data retention!

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Awake Infants: Insights From More Than 750 Scanning Sessions

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in awake infants has the potential to reveal how the early developing brain gives rise to cognition and behavior. However, awake infant fMRI poses signifi....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Now out in an issue! ~~ www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

The ubiquity of episodic-like memory during infancy

Considerable progress has been made in understanding early memory development. However, much of this research pre-dates contemporary theories of memory systems in the mature brain. This review provide...

cell.com

Melissa Kibbe@levelsof.bsky.social · last yr.

Evidence for episodic-like memory in infancy is everywhere, if you know how to look for it! It was such a pleasure to write this paper with @lillianbehm.bsky.social and Nick Turk-Browne, out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social. #psychscisky #cogscisky #philsky #cogdev

Last month, I launched my lab at Ohio State. Our lab website is now live, and we're recruiting graduate students this cycle! If you're interested in the cognitive (neuro)science of learning & memory, please reach out! www.momentslab.org

Moments Lab

momentslab.org

How does spontaneous memory reinstatement at rest relate to episodic memory during development? And how do early experiences influence neural mechanisms of episodic memory encoding and reinstatement? New preprint! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Spontaneous reinstatement of episodic memories in the developing human brain

The hippocampus supports episodic memories in development, and yet how the brain stabilizes these memories determines their long-term accessibility. This study examined how episodic memories formed in...

biorxiv.org

I was given the opportunity to write a brief highlight of a paper that is important to the field & personally meaningful, and I chose to write about @drjenryan.bsky.social's elegant work linking the hippocampus to eye movement markers of relational memory. Read more about it here! 👇🏼 rdcu.be/eyaXA

Incredibly excited and grateful to share that I’ll be starting a lab at The Ohio State University this(!) fall! My lab will study human learning and memory, with related interests in sleep, stress, and time perception. More info soon, but do get in touch if you’re interested in joining!

Thrilled to share the new paper from the lab out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com, led by the great @jetrach.bsky.social! "Mental graphs structure the storage and retrieval of visuomotor associations" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mental graphs structure the storage and retrieval of visuomotor associations - Nature Human Behaviour

Trach and McDougle show that motor responses can form part of structured, graph-like memory representations.

nature.com

Online Now: The ubiquity of episodic-like memory during infancy

So excited to share my *first* first-author paper, out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social!! In this review, we argue that even if you don’t remember being a baby, evidence that infants form episodic-like memories is actually all around us: authors.elsevier.com/c/1l82g4sIRv...

Come check out the lab's research at @srcdorg.bsky.social this week! @leonardlearnlab.bsky.social

🤔 How do individual differences in fetal, infant, and toddler (FIT) neurodevelopment shape long-term #brain and #behavioral outcomes? 💡 A new paper from the FIT’NG community explores this question and the challenges of measuring early brain #development. 🌐 Read more: doi.org/10.1016/j.dc...

New preprint! Excited to share our latest work “Accelerated learning of a noninvasive human brain-computer interface via manifold geometry” ft. outstanding former undergraduate Chandra Fincke, @glajoie.bsky.social, @krishnaswamylab.bsky.social, and @wutsaiyale.bsky.social's Nick Turk-Browne 1/8

Accelerated learning of a noninvasive human brain-computer interface via manifold geometry

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) promise to restore and enhance a wide range of human capabilities. However, a barrier to the adoption of BCIs is how long it can take users to learn to control them. W...

doi.org

A brave (and patient) group of neuroscientists have figured out how to do task-based fMRI in babies and toddlers. They aim to uncover how the infant mind takes shape—and the method has already provided new insight into infantile amnesia. My latest www.thetransmitter.org/cognitive-ne... #neuroskyence

What infant fMRI is revealing about the developing mind

Cognitive neuroscientists have finally clocked how to perform task-based fMRI experiments in awake babies. Now they want watch cognition take shape.

thetransmitter.org

Brilliant new paper from Tristan showing the infant hippocampus can encode memories beginning around 12 months!! An important stride in unravelling the mystery of infantile amnesia, her work suggests that babies have the ability to form memories, but they become inaccessible for retrieval later on

Tristan Yates@tristansyates.bsky.social · last yr.

Why do we not remember being a baby? One idea is that the hippocampus, which is essential for episodic memory in adults, is too immature to form individual memories in infancy. We tested this using awake infant fMRI, new in @science.org #ScienceResearch www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Last year, I was overjoyed to receive an NIH NRSA fellowship to study toddler brains and caregiving effects on memory at Columbia. Last night, my grant was terminated.

So happy to see this work from Jennifer Sexton out in the world! 🎉 Contributing to this project when I was a research assistant helped inspire my interest in age-related changes in relational memory! www.frontiersin.org/journals/cog...

Frontiers | Measuring relational memory in older and younger adults

frontiersin.org

What factors impact the success of an awake infant fMRI scan? What can be done to maximize the data we collect from each infant? In our new preprint, the Turk-Browne Lab and Saxe Lab combine our data from over 750 attempted scans to try to answer these questions: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Data retention in awake infant fMRI: Lessons from more than 750 scanning sessions

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in awake infants has the potential to reveal how the early developing brain gives rise to cognition and behavior. However, awake infant fMRI poses signific...

biorxiv.org