Marit Petzka

@maritpetzka.bsky.social

cognitive neuroscience: memory. learning. sleep. replay. postdoc: SchuckLab | Uni Hamburg

🚨 💫 💥 Interested in PhD / Postdoc opportunities in computational psychiatry / cognitive neuroscience? My lab at University College Dublin 🇮🇪 is currently accepting expressions of interest for internally funded PhD/Postdoc applications for positions starting in September 2027 (!). 1/

Thrilled to share this with the world! In this work led by Zihan Bai, we asked how episodic memory interacts with working memory and found evidence for a tight integration between the two systems. Zihan walks you through it in his thread 🧵🧠 🔥

Zihan Bai@zihanbai.bsky.social · last mo.

Excited to share the first first-author preprint of my PhD at NYU with @s-michelmann.bsky.social andDaryl Fougnie. Using eye-tracking in a novel behavioral paradigm, we reveal the mechanisms by which episodic memory (EM) and working memory (WM) interact. 🧠 doi: doi.org/10.64898/202...

Can we study MTL ripples non-invasively? New preprint! We show that source-resolved MEG tracks ripple-like activity during sleep that: • localizes to the MTL • follows the canonical SO–spindle hierarchy • matches an iEEG benchmark • indexes memory reactivation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Non-invasive tracking of ripple-like activity during human sleep using MEG

Hippocampal ripples are considered a key mechanism of sleep-dependent memory consolidation. In humans, however, their direct investigation has relied on invasive recordings from patients with epilepsy...

biorxiv.org

Excited to share my first #preprint with @matthiasnau.bsky.social on how gaze behavior shapes brain activity during eyes-closed rest and sleep! Gaze-dependent activity was widespread even during sleep, including in many visual cortices, and altered brain-wide functional connectivity! 🧵 1/8

Brain-wide gaze-dependent activity during eyes-closed rest and sleep

Gaze behavior and brain activity are tightly coupled during perception and mental imagery. Whether this coupling extends to eyes-closed states remains largely unknown, primarily because measuring eye ...

biorxiv.org

New preprint! We show low arousal states promote hippocampal ripple genesis in sleep and wake. This bridges rodent work, where ripples predominate during sleep, with human studies reporting ripples during active behavior, identifying low arousal as a common mechanism www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Arousal state modulates human hippocampal ripples

Hippocampal ripples are transient, high-frequency oscillations linked to memory replay and consolidation. Ripples are well-characterized in rodents to occur during periods of behavioral inactivity (i....

biorxiv.org

🧠 New preprint! How well can current algorithms *actually* detect neural "replay" in the human brain under absolutely optimal conditions? We built FASTIMAGES: A combined MEG + fMRI benchmark with KNOWN neural sequences, so replay-detection methods can finally be validated against a ground truth.

FASTIMAGES: Validating replay detection methods in human neuroimaging

A combined MEG + fMRI benchmark dataset with known neural sequences to validate replay detection methods (TDLM and SODA).

cimh-clinical-psychology.github.io

Interested in human replay and solid methods? Jointly with @skjerns.de we're releasing a benchmark dataset with known ground-truth neural sequences in MEG & fMRI, for developing & validating replay methods. First test: existing methods show similar effect sizes, but room to improve shorturl.at/6TgIr

FASTIMAGES: Validating replay detection methods in human neuroimaging using a combined MEG and fMRI dataset

Studies in rodents and humans using invasive electrophysiology have established that neural replay is a ubiquitous phenomenon in the brain that is associated with a wide range of cognitive functions, ...

shorturl.at

New paper from our group: using simultaneous EEG-fMRI, we investigated the neural mechanisms underlying individual NREM sleep slow waves. Our findings suggest that slow waves are not a homogeneous phenomenon and may reflect distinct physiological processes. www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Thalamic involvement defines distinct slow-wave subtypes in NREM sleep - Communications Biology

Using simultaneous EEG-fMRI, we identify two types of NREM slow waves with distinct thalamic profiles. Large, synchronized waves involve early thalamic activation and arousal markers, whereas smaller ...

nature.com

🔔 Preprint: “Hippocampal ripples evoke a stereotyped cortical response followed by spindle-mediated network synchronization.” Combining iEEG+scalp EEG during sleep, we show that hippocampal ripples leave a decodable cortical fingerprint and are followed by brain-wide spindle synchronization!

doi.org