Mariam Aly
@mariamaly.bsky.social
I study brains and sometimes use one. https://www.alylab.org/
BREAKING NEWS! The Senate has paused the OMB rule that would put Trump appointees in charge of federal spending. Next step - Contact your MoC and tell them to permanently REVOKE THE RULE: zurl.co/1SXEN Article: zurl.co/23mF8
Senate finalizes funding patch that would block Trump’s grant overhaul
Language is included to delay the president’s move to put political appointees in charge of grant approval.
zurl.co
New preprint alert: "Mapping the abstraction of song representations from perception to autobiographical memory", led by @rcassanocoleman.bsky.social, with @kellyjakubowski.bsky.social. osf.io/preprints/ps...
Now final in @elife.bsky.social: #Synesthetes really do 'see' when reporting colors while reading (typeface gray) numbers: pupils change according to the perceived colors' brightness - if a synesthete sees a bright yellow, the pupils become smaller. elifesciences.org/articles/110...
Christoph Strauch@cstrauch.bsky.social · 5mo agoWe 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!
Check out our newest preprint, led by @sheensu.bsky.social and with @jasonleng.bsky.social, on when and why people choose to put off choosing! ⚖️🗓️ osf.io/preprints/ps... Sheen summarizes the excellent work in the 🧵 below:
@sheensu.bsky.social · 2d agoNew Preprint Alert! With @jasonleng.bsky.social @ashenhav.bsky.social @shenhavlab.bsky.social “Characterizing the causes, dynamics, and consequences of choice deferral” osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵🧵🧵
The Neuroscience Department at UC Berkeley is hiring an Asst Professor in Computational Neuro. All areas of computational/theoretical neuro are welcome. Deadline Oct 30. Join our neuroscience community! aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05446 #AcademicJobs #Neuroscience #NeuroJobs
Assistant Professor - Computational Neuroscience - Department of Neuroscience
University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!
aprecruit.berkeley.edu
⏳ #BlackInTime celebrates the pioneers who shaped the future of science. People like Dr. Mary Logan Reddick and Timnit Gebru remind us that Black innovation has always been at the forefront of discovery. ✨ #BINW26
***New preprint from the lab*** showing “Generative replay across hippocampal-neocortical circuits”. In sleep we show spiking sequences in V1 (sensory neocortex!) that represent information that has not been directly experienced www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @bndu.ox.ac.uk @ndcnoxford.bsky.social
Generative replay across hippocampal-neocortical circuits
To make flexible decisions, the brain needs to make inferences between events that were not directly experienced together. In sharp-wave ripple (SWR) events, during periods of rest and sleep, spiking ...
biorxiv.org
🚨 new lab preprint! Research from @gordonfeld.bsky.social during his DFG personal fellowship to my lab many moons ago: Global structure of new relational knowledge networks is represented in retrosplenial complex, and node-distance in hippocampus www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
"..CA3 operates as a nonlinearly gated scene constructor and CA1 as a continuous landmark integrator to build and maintain the cognitive map." How visual scenes recruit spatial maps: threshold-gated activation in CA3 versus continuous integration in CA1 Inah Lee Lab: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
How visual scenes recruit spatial maps: threshold-gated activation in CA3 versus continuous integration in CA1
The hippocampal cognitive map is constructed from environmental sensory inputs, but the conditions that recruit a spatial map from a quiescent baseline remain unclear. Using a parametric virtual reali...
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
Want to teach your undergrad Honors students or early grad students about peer review, but not sure how? 🤔 We'll do it for free! We're offering free peer review workshops for departments, ideal for advanced undergrad/early grad seminars in Psych, Neuro, and related fields. See below for details!
Reviewer Zero@reviewerzero.bsky.social · 3mo agoAre your students entering research culture without ever learning how peer review actually works? We'd love to help. We're offering free "Peer Review 101" virtual workshops for undergrad/grad seminars, tailored to Psych, Neuro, and related fields. Visit our website to learn more tinyurl.com/2ra56w72
#JNeurosci: Findings from van Geen et al. support an integrated view of decision-making where mnemonic and value-based systems interact even in basic learning contexts, and highlight age-related disruptions in the transfer of info across brain regions. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1459-25.2026
SUPER excited to share the first-ever preprint out of my PhD! AND it comes with a CAT story. I know there are quite some people here who love seeing cat pictures!! 🐈1/🧵
Alpha rhythm determines speech perception rate? And speeding it up makes unintelligibly fast speech comprehensible? This is nuts! www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
pnas.org
NEW: The Trump admin finalized a regulation which makes the largest changes to the student visa process in 50 years, along with changes to rules for exchange visitors and international journalists. 🧵on some of the most consequential changes set to go into effect in September.
AILA@aila.org · 3w agoDHS has published its Final Rule to eliminate "duration of status" for F, J & I nonimmigrants. One of the most significant changes to international student, exchange visitor & foreign media programs in decades, it will be costly, cause chaos, and cut legal immigration.
📣 REGISTRATION IS OPEN 📣 Our 7th annual #BlackInNeuroWeek is coming soon 🧠 From July 27th to August 2nd, we have an ✨AMAZING✨ week of events planned for you all, free and open to the public 🤗 Don’t miss out! Register for #BINW26 here ⤵️ events.zoom.us/ev/AgaErvpe_... #BlackInSTEM #Neuroskyence 🧪
I am deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Susumu Tonegawa. He was the founding director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and a remarkable scientific force. I am personally grateful for all that he has done for me. @picowerinstitute.bsky.social
How do we regroup and resume goal directed behaviors when distractions pull us away from our plans? In a snake game inspired memory task, we found people flexibly replan after distraction, but this flexibility was constrained, worked for only one item in memory. www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Working memory constraints on replanning following distraction - Communications Psychology
Using a Snake-inspired working memory task, this study shows that people dynamically reprioritize memorized goals after distraction, demonstrating how working memory supports flexible planning in dyna...
nature.com
Ziyao Zhang@bulezz.bsky.social · 4mo agonew preprint! 🐍 In a dynamic Snake game inspired task, we show participants flexibly replan their behaviors after distraction, but this ability is constrained by memory load and distraction strength. EEG results coming soon👀 osf.io/preprints/ps...
Holy COW. Text analysis of comments on the OMB rule: overwhelming opposition, overwhelmingly not form letters. (But 9 in 10 comments supporting the rule ARE form responses, LOL) Whatever happens next, folks have stepped up.
Karen R. Lips@karenrlips.bsky.social · 3w agoNew perspective paper from our lab: “The hippocampus as a generative model” out now !! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article... The traditional view of the hippocampus is that it creates a cognitive map. Here we extend this view to conceptualise the hippocampus as a “generative model”.
The hippocampus as a generative model
Abstract. A generative model can be defined as a model of the latent causes of sensory input that can be used to generate new data samples. By examining em
royalsocietypublishing.org
And for our own contribution to the theme issue: Oliver Warrington and I show that the dentate gyrus encodes prediction errors during learning of perceptual predictions. This finding complements our previous work showing a transition from errors to predictions during learning (Aitken & Kok 2022). 🧠🟦
Dentate gyrus encodes prediction errors during learning of perceptual predictions
Abstract. The hippocampus is involved in learning predictive associations, responding to prediction errors as well as representing predictions of future in
royalsocietypublishing.org
Peter Kok@peterkok.bsky.social · 4w agoThe hippocampus sits at the interface of perception & memory, allowing us to link past, present, & future through its role in generating predictions. Excited to share this theme issue in @royalsociety.org's Philosophical Transactions B, co-edited with @barense.bsky.social & @mariamaly.bsky.social
Very excited to share our new review on C-HORSE, our model of the hippocampus! We think there is very encouraging alignment between C-HORSE proposals and the extant empirical literature, though we also note plenty of areas for further model development. royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...
Evidence for complementary learning systems within the hippocampus
Abstract. Decades of research have established the hippocampus as central to episodic memory, but growing evidence suggests that it also contributes to str
royalsocietypublishing.org
How do we update our predictions when our environment changes? The hippocampus rapidly integrates previously distinct sequences to support updated predictions. New work w/ @hannahtarder-stoll.bsky.social & @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social – part of the theme issue on hippocampal predictions!
The hippocampus rapidly integrates sequence representations during novel multistep predictions
Abstract. Memories for temporally extended sequences can be used adaptively to predict future events on multiple timescales, a function that relies on the
royalsocietypublishing.org
It was a delight to co-edit this issue with @peterkok.bsky.social & @barense.bsky.social, who are every bit as amazing to work with as you might expect 😊 I'm grateful to the authors, whose papers make this such an exciting collection, and to @catalinayang.bsky.social for the gorgeous cover!
Peter Kok@peterkok.bsky.social · 4w agoThe hippocampus sits at the interface of perception & memory, allowing us to link past, present, & future through its role in generating predictions. Excited to share this theme issue in @royalsociety.org's Philosophical Transactions B, co-edited with @barense.bsky.social & @mariamaly.bsky.social
Black In Neuro Week 2026 is July 27–Aug. 2. Join us for our 7th annual celebration of Black excellence in neuroscience. 📣 #BINRollCall ⏳ #BlackInTime (NEW!) 🧠 #NeuroRacism 🌍 #NeuroAcrossTheDiaspora 💼 #NeuroCareers ✨ #BlackInNeuroJoy 😌 #BlackRestInNeuro #BINW26 #BlackInNeuro
Now in press at Cortex! "False discovery rate correction promotes confounded neuroimaging designs" Paper 🔓: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Mark Thornton@markthornton.bsky.social · 11mo agoAfter 5 years, I finally carved out time to turn this blog post on FDR (markallenthornton.com/blog/fdr-pro...) into a manuscript. The preprint features a much broader range of simulations showing how FDR promotes confounds, and how this effect compounds with publication bias: osf.io/preprints/ps...
We're finally getting the tools to study replay in humans. But why bother? What can we learn from it that we don't know from rodent recordings? Our thoughts are now out in a new TICS Forum Great fun writing this w @smfleming.bsky.social + @maritpetzka.bsky.social authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...
What can we learn from studying replay in humans?
Noninvasive methods are making it possible to study neural replay in humans. Although focused on alignment with rodent findings, human research often …
authors.elsevier.com
“move from preprint to peer-reviewed publication leaves the central claims of most abstracts intact, indicating preprints are a reliable source…papers that were never posted as preprints were retracted at roughly twice the rate of those that were…” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Tracking claim changes from preprint to publication across 72,644 biomedical studies using large language models
Preprints now disseminate a large share of biomedical research before peer review. Because they have not yet passed peer review, some scientists regard preprint claims as unverified or potentially unr...
biorxiv.org
Just how goal-directed are hippocampal theta sweeps, anyway? Great News & Views from @adredish.bsky.social Lab on recent theta goal papers: www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroskyence
Just how goal-directed are hippocampal theta sweeps, anyway? - Nature Neuroscience
Planning is a cognitive process that is thought to be grounded in hippocampal sequences, but recent studies have suggested that a simpler mechanism, fundamentally incompatible with those planning hypo...
nature.com
