The default network is often thought to interfere with the selective deployment of attention—but our new @pnas.org paper shows a different story… 👉 Find the paper here: doi.org/10.1073/pnas... 1/🧵

The 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

Volume 381 Issue 1954 | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B | The Royal Society

Influential themed journal issues across the life sciences.

royalsocietypublishing.org

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...

How does the human brain extract abstract structure from experience? We show that sensory-independent relational representations emerge in mPFC over several days. Work with @mgarvert.bsky.social and @behrenstimb.bsky.social now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social: www.cell.com/current-biol...

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...

Learning shapes neural geometry in the primate prefrontal cortex www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Learning shapes neural geometry in the primate prefrontal cortex - Nature Neuroscience

Learning transforms prefrontal cortex activity from flexible, high-dimensional representations into compact, task-relevant and abstract codes, enabling efficient generalization of learned rules to new...

nature.com

Researchers have tracked the electrical crackle of individual brain cells in real time during unscripted conversations, capturing how sentences are built before a single word is spoken go.nature.com/4uOEKii

How the brain builds sentences, neuron by neuron

Nature - Neural maps reveal the specialized cells that produce speech.

go.nature.com

Neuroscientists were asked what they hate about "AI". The people have spoken 🤣 #OHBM2026 #NeuroAI

#OHBM2026 Come say hi at my poster on Wednesday and Thursday!

Deniz Vatansever@neurodenizen.bsky.social · 2mo ago

4/6 📌 #OHBM2026 Poster 2995 How does the brain integrate perception and action while playing video games (Super Mario)? Ozan Vardal presents: "Shared neural codes for perception and action integration during naturalistic behavior" #NaturalisticNeuroscience @cneuromod.ca @ozvardal.bsky.social

Very excited to see new work on higher cognition using neuroimaging and video game paradigms!

Botos Csabi@botoscsabi.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Jeee 🐦‍⬛ I am very proud of our joint effort with @sreejan.bsky.social on the project "Reason to Play" LRMs show human-like rule discovery, and their hidden states predict human brain activity during gameplay 10x better than previous methods Interactive demo + paper: botcs.github.io/reason-to-pl...

How do brains plan actions towards goals? To get at this question we studied mice navigating complex mazes as goals changed on every trial 🧵 Work with @thomasakam.bsky.social @behrenstimb.bsky.social @kristorpjensen.bsky.social now on BioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Structured and flexible representations in medial-frontal cortex support goal-directed navigation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.09.729603v1

What makes an artwork beautiful, and can your brain's response decode such hidden dimensions of aesthetic appeal? We built a framework to find out 🎨 🧠 @natcomms.nature.com @cognizelab.bsky.social First author: @neocosmliang.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroaesthetics #DefaultMode

New paper from our lab! Awesome effort by @kaixiangzhuang.bsky.social and co.

Deniz Vatansever@neurodenizen.bsky.social · 4mo ago

New from our @cognizelab.bsky.social in Advanced Science: Beneath the Big Five, personality consistently organises into two dimensions, each with distinct brain signatures. Amazing work by postdoc @kaixiangzhuang.bsky.social and thanks to all our collaborators! doi.org/10.1002/advs...

Check out our new work on the relationship between glioma and system-level functional networks! We identify that nearly all gliomas localize within a common brain functional network, Action-Mode Network (AMN) . biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.05.697608v1

Read my new piece in the @thetransmitter on @rougier's 1000 neuron challenge https://www.thetransmitter.org/computational-neuroscience/the-1000-neuron-challenge/ models, brains, and the value of scientific competitions as sites of integration! #Neuroscience #CompNeuro

The 1,000 neuron challenge

A competition to design small, efficient neural models may provide new insight into real brains—and perhaps unite disparate modeling efforts.

thetransmitter.org

Just finished Natural Neuroscience – a book I think will become an instant classic. This book can do for neuroscience what Schrodinger’s ‘What is Life’ did to usher in the golden age of molecular biology. Nachum Ulanovsky has given us a compelling call to arms to truly understand the brain.

🧠 New paper alert (the 1st one from our new lab)! Led by 1st author & VR wizard @jaquent.bsky.social @natcomms.nature.com How do our brains distinguish novel from familiar places as we explore our environments, e.g., a new city? 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s414... 🧵 Thread below with key findings ⬇️

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁? Don't miss the Neuroscience and Philosophy Salon. Earl Miller and team will discuss recent paper and we'll have plenty of discussion. Open to all. Sept 12, noon EST-US umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi... #neuroskyence @earlkmiller.bsky.social

How do humans navigate unfamiliar environments? @denislan.bsky.social @lhuntneuro.bsky.social @summerfieldlab.bsky.social show that humans & deep meta-learning networks combine ‘vector-based’ & ‘transition-based’ strategies for flexible navigation in similar ways @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/45uSwNm

Absolute thrill to be part of this team and to be able to piggy-back on this post

Deniz Vatansever@neurodenizen.bsky.social · last yr.

Big year for our lab at #OHBM2025! Thrilled to present an exciting mix of posters, talks, and lots of brainy fun 🧠🤓 Come check us out! We’d love to connect! @cognizelab.bsky.social @ohbmofficial.bsky.social #OHBM #OHBM2025 #Neuroimaging

Hot off the press, by my brilliant colleague Ashley Zhou

MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge@mrccbu.bsky.social · last yr.

New opinion paper linking the brain’s DMN response to cognitive transitions during narratives and task-switching; by Ashley Zhou, John Duncan and Daniel Mitchell: doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

Last chance to have a chat about naturalistic decision-making by my poster! #OHBM2025

Deniz Vatansever@neurodenizen.bsky.social · last yr.

@ozvardal.bsky.social modeling decision states and their neural representation during gameplay #PacMan 👾👾👾

Just arrived in Brisbane with the loveliest of teams. Can't wait to connect with fellow neuronerds at #OHBM2025!

Deniz Vatansever@neurodenizen.bsky.social · last yr.

✈️ Off to #OHBM2025! @cognizelab.bsky.social is en route and ready to dive into an exciting week of brain science, inspiring talks, and catching up with the neuroimaging community. If you’re in Brisbane and want to connect, come find us or drop a message! 🧠💬 #OHBM2025 @ohbmofficial.bsky.social

Our work, out at Cell, shows that the brain’s dopamine signals teach each individual a unique learning trajectory. Collaborative experiment-theory effort, led by Sam Liebana in the lab. The first experiment my lab started just shy of 6y ago & v excited to see it out: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Now out 🚨 🧪 : our preprint describing dynamics of an extended frontal lobe network (4 cortical regions) in monkeys solving complex multi-step spatial problems! We observe distributed codes for goals, states, and planned moves across PFC! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #neuroscience #compneuro 🧵👇

Neural dynamics of an extended frontal lobe network in goal-subgoal problem solving

Complex behavior calls for hierarchical representation of current state, goal, and component moves. In the human brain, a network of “multiple-demand” (MD) regions underpins cognitive control. We reco...

biorxiv.org