Marcel S. Kehl
@mskehl.bsky.social
Oxford Postdoc in the Staresina Lab | Sleep | Memory | Human Olfaction & Single Neurons
Summer Preprint Alert 🔥🚨 Breathing isn't just for oxygen; it’s a rhythmic pacemaker for the sleeping brain. Our new preprint shows that the respiratory cycle actually gates memory reactivation during NREM sleep! 🧠😴💨 👇🧵(1/8)
bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · yesterdayThe breathing cycle gates memory reactivation during human NREM sleep https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.29.741474v1
🎉 *extremely* excited to share our human single neuron + movie dataset is out in #ScientificData! 📄 Human neuron activity during an 83-minute movie from 2,286 neurons and 29 patients 🔗https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-026-07955-0 1st public dataset from @humansingleneuron.bsky.social!🧵
Ever wondered how the hippocampal cognitive map is read-out? @changmin-yu.bsky.social @zilong-ji.bsky.social with Jake & John, show that, during navigation, theta sweeps indicate remembered goal-directions (cf. current/next movements or perceptual targets) 1/2 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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
🔔 Our new preprint is out! Here we asked whether sleep spindles - a hallmark NREM rhythm linked to plasticity and memory - changes how well latent working memory representations can be accessed after a nap.
bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · last mo.Sleep spindles enhance latent working memory representations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.26.734777v1
Sleep spindles enhance latent working memory representations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.26.734777v1
🧵 How does the human brain turn experiences into memories? During my four years of PhD at Oxford, I investigated this question through a collaboration between Oxford, Toulouse, and Paris, recording directly from the human brain during a relational memory task.
🔔 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
I'm proud to say we are releasing LAION-fMRI, a densely sampled 7T fMRI dataset of natural images, with very broad stimulus sampling for testing countless hypotheses and for deeply exploring brain representations. The dataset is now available at laion-fmri.hebartlab.com What does LAION-fMRI offer? 🧵
LAION-fMRI - a 7T fMRI dataset of human vision
LAION-fMRI (LfMRI / LAION MRI dataset): 5 subjects, 25,052 launch-release natural images, 165 acquired 7T fMRI sessions with single-trial GLMsingle betas, retinotopy, localizers, and diffusion.
laion-fmri.hebartlab.com
🚨 Preprint alert! 🚨 How does the olfactory bulb transform overlapping sensory inputs into representations that are easier to distinguish? New study by Sina Tootoonian, Yikai Yang, @andreas-t-schaefer.bsky.social @crick.ac.uk and myself. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... A short 🧵 below
biorxiv.org
Excited to see our paper describing a stereotyped receptor map for smell (led by @davidhbrann.bsky.social ) out in the world! See below for short thread with open access link to paper www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/s...
Scientists Unveil ‘Long Lost’ Map for Smell
nytimes.com
How do experiences reshape our internal representations of the world? @bstaresina.bsky.social &co show that learning sequential experiences reshapes how the #brain represents what we see; a post-learning nap strengthens these predictive changes @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4dJGwMC
Decomposing representational drift across wake and sleep https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.31.715372v1
Sleep ripples drive single-neuron reactivation for human memory consolidation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.27.714528v1
🔔PREPRINT: Sleep ripples drive single-neuron reactivation for human memory consolidation 1/9: How does sleep support human memory consolidation? To test this, we recorded hundreds of neurons in the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) across learning, wakefulness, and sleep. doi.org/10.64898/202...
doi.org
A learning-evoked slow-oscillatory architecture paces population activity for offline reactivation across the human medial temporal lobe https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.12.705512v1
Finally out in eLife!! "Early foveal cortex predicts the features of saccade targets through feedback from higher cortical areas." elifesciences.org/articles/107...
Feedback of peripheral saccade targets to early foveal cortex
Low-level features of peripheral saccade targets are fed back to early foveal retinotopic cortex in a signal that resembles activation elicited by direct foveal presentation.
elifesciences.org
Martin Hebart@martinhebart.bsky.social · last yr.We make about 3-4 fast eye movements a second, yet our world appears stable. How is this possible? In a preprint led by @lucakaemmer.bsky.social we test the intriguing idea that anticipatory signals in the fovea may explain visual stability. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Last week to apply! Cognitive Neuroscience Research Laboratory Manager at @oxexppsy.bsky.social (with links to @oxcin.bsky.social and @ox.ac.uk) www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPZ833/c...
Cognitive Neuroscience Research Laboratory Manager at University of Oxford
Check out jobs.ac.uk for opportunities in professional services, including Cognitive Neuroscience Research Laboratory Manager. Apply today and learn more about the role.
jobs.ac.uk
How are memories consolidated during sleep? Excited to share another preprint: hippocampal SWRs route memory content to the cortex via interregional co-reactivation of concept cells, optimized by slow-oscillation–spindle coupling. With the great @tschreiner.bsky.social @humansingleneuron.bsky.social
bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 7mo agoSequential coupling of sleep oscillations enables concept-neuron reactivation and supports information flow across the human hippocampal-cortical circuit https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.15.699122v1
Nature research paper: Distinct neuronal populations in the human brain combine content and context go.nature.com/4jCecge
Distinct neuronal populations in the human brain combine content and context - Nature
Single-neuron recordings in humans reveal largely separate content and context neurons whose coordinated activity flexibly places memory items in context.
go.nature.com
What is a 🧠 ripple? See our @cellpress.bsky.social perspective on ripple diversity and the grammar of memory replay: connecting key pieces from current work across the field. 👉🏼 www.sciencedirect.com:5037/science/arti...
I'm happy to share my debut as first-author with the recent publication of our article in #JNeurosci: www.jneurosci.org/content/earl... Big thanks again to @tschreiner.bsky.social and the whole team who made this possible! 🧠🌬️
Respiration shapes the neural dynamics of successful remembering in humans.
Respiration has been shown to impact memory retrieval, yet the neural dynamics underlying this effect remain unclear. Here, we investigated how respiration shapes both behavioral and neural expression...
jneurosci.org
Esteban@estebanbt.bsky.social · last yr.Very excited to share the first preprint of my PhD thesis! Together with @tschreiner.bsky.social, we investigated how respiration coordinates signature neural expressions of successful remembering during memory retrieval. 🫁🧠 🧵(1/8)
Well done Pin-Chun! Thanks also to @oxexppsy.bsky.social, @oxcin.bsky.social, and @erc.europa.eu
Pin-Chun Chen@pinchunc.bsky.social · 8mo agoThrilled that my recent paper, Hippocampal Ripples during Offline Periods Predict Human Motor Sequence Learning, was selected for the “This Week in The Journal” highlight! 🤩 Huge thanks to @bstaresina.bsky.social and our collaborators who made this work possible! doi.org/10.1523/JNEU... #JNeurosci
New work from the lab published in @cp-neuron.bsky.social by @jonasterlau.bsky.social and Jan Martini. We describe that trial-by-trial variability indexes recurrent connectivity across the cortical hierarchy, which supports reliable and flexible coding www.cell.com/neuron/abstr... (1/4)
Structure in noise: Recurrent connectivity shapes neural variability to balance perceptual and cognitive demands in the human brain
Does neural variability reflect random noise or a feature that benefits adaptive behavior? Using intracranial recordings in humans, Terlau et al. demonstrate that neural variability results from the r...
cell.com
My Lab @unlv.edu is recruiting motivated students interested in human memory and brain research! Learn #EEG, #fMRI, and data analysis while exploring how we remember 🧠 📧 DM me or check out #PhD program www.unlv.edu/degree/phd-n... & www.unlv.edu/psychology/g... Plus, Vegas is a fun place to live!🤟
Doctor of Philosophy - Neuroscience
This interdisciplinary Ph.D. program provides coursework and research training in neuroscience, with research mentoring spanning a range of different dimensions (basic to applied/clinical neuroscience...
unlv.edu
Please repost! I am looking for a PhD candidate in the area of Computational Cognitive Neuroscience to start in early 2026. The position is funded as part of the Excellence Cluster "The Adaptive Mind" at @jlugiessen.bsky.social. Please apply here until Nov 25: www.uni-giessen.de/de/ueber-uns...
🚨Preprint: Semantic Tuning of Single Neurons in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe 1/8: How do human neurons encode meaning? In this work, led by Katharina Karkowski, we recorded hundreds of human MTL neurons to study semantic coding in the human brain: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Semantic Tuning of Single Neurons in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe
The Medial Temporal Lobe (MTL) is key to human cognition, supporting memory, emotional processing, navigation, and semantic coding. Rare direct human MTL recordings revealed concept cells, which were ...
doi.org
Semantic Tuning of Single Neurons in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.21.682935v1
