@noldusit.bsky.social I don't think AI understands how jigsaw pieces work yet...

Journal editors creating PDF layouts where the text is on page 5, Figure 1 is on page 30, and the legend is on page 42:

I Want To Kill The Unicorn

ALT: I Want To Kill The Unicorn

static.klipy.com

During sleep, neurons in the hippocampus 'replay' past activity patterns. This is thought to underlie memory consolidation 🧠 After a busy day, how does the brain sort out what is worth replaying? 🤔 Check out this preprint 📃 from Tirole, Duvelle and Bendor for answers! doi.org/10.64898/202...

Time, but not reward, shapes replay-based episodic prioritization

Why are some experiences remembered better than others? Leading theories propose that hippocampal replay prioritizes memories for consolidation according to their expected future value. We recorded hi...

doi.org

Hillscape cells: Hippocampal place cells map terrain geometry independently of behavior #neuroskyence @roddy-grieves.bsky.social Eleonore Duvelle and Jeff Taube: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Hippocampal place cells map terrain geometry independently of behavior

Place cells map terrain geometry, not behavior, revealing a surface-based brain code for real-world navigation.

science.org

Ever wonder how your brain navigates the real world? 🧠 Most spatial navigation studies use flat, 2D mazes. But the real world is hilly, irregular, and bumpy! ⛰️ Our new paper in #ScienceAdvances asked a simple question: How does the brain map uneven terrain? 📄 doi.org/10.1126/scia... 🧵👇️️️ 1/

We've now highlighted all our amazing confirmed keynote speakers! Please sign up to our email list as this will be the main way we will communicate. Stay tuned for news about submissions, registration, and lots more! icom-memory.org #neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition #ICOM2027 #philosophysky 🧪

ICOM - International Conference on Memory 2027

The International Conference on Memory 2027, will be held in Glasgow, Scotland between 26 - 30 July 2027.

icom-memory.org

We're back with another keynote speaker highlight - Prof Lawrence Barsalou! icom-memory.org #neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition #ICOM2027 #philosophysky 🧪

Today's keynote speaker to highlight is Prof Dorthe Bernsten! icom-memory.org #neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition #ICOM2027 #philosophysky 🧪

For the next few days we'll be focussing on our amazing keynote speakers! First up, we have Prof Sue Gathercole. This is particularly fitting as Sue was one of the co-founders of ICOM. icom-memory.org

We are very excited to officially announced that ICOM - The International Conference on Memory - is back in 2027 from 26th-30th July! icom-memory.org #neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition 🧪

Shortcuts as a behavioural signature of cognitive map use? My awesome colleagues Eleonore Duvelle & Roddy Grieves revisit Tolman’s sunburst maze and are not convinced…

Roddy Grieves@roddy-grieves.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Can humans & animals really use internal maps to take shortcuts? Tolman famously said yes - based largely on his Sunburst maze. Our new review & meta-analysis suggests evidence is far weaker than you might think. 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1111/ejn.... @uofgpsychneuro.bsky.social @ejneuroscience.bsky.social

Amazing work. And ouch, a heavy blow to one of my favourite literature "classics".

Roddy Grieves@roddy-grieves.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Can humans & animals really use internal maps to take shortcuts? Tolman famously said yes - based largely on his Sunburst maze. Our new review & meta-analysis suggests evidence is far weaker than you might think. 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1111/ejn.... @uofgpsychneuro.bsky.social @ejneuroscience.bsky.social

JOVE's AI-voiced video describing the Morris water maze (app.jove.com/v/5418/spati...) : "Visual cues are arranged around the maze to associate each quadrant with a specific symbol" 😕 "The rodent should learn to associate the location of the platform with the location of a specific visual cue" 🤦

Can humans & animals really use internal maps to take shortcuts? Tolman famously said yes - based largely on his Sunburst maze. Our new review & meta-analysis suggests evidence is far weaker than you might think. 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1111/ejn.... @uofgpsychneuro.bsky.social @ejneuroscience.bsky.social

Tolman's Sunburst Maze 80 Years on: A Meta‐Analysis Reveals Poor Replicability and Little Evidence for Shortcutting

In 1946, Tolman et al. reported that rats could take a novel shortcut to a goal after training on an indirect route, supporting the Cognitive Map theory. However, a review of subsequent Sunburst maze...

doi.org

Publication bias is bad, sure. But has anyone studied publication bias in studies on publication bias? (They have. There isn’t.) doi.org/10.1136/bmj.... Next up: publication bias in studies on studies on studies of publication bias. #AcademicHumor #metascience #nerdhumor

Systematic review of publication bias in studies on publication bias

Publication bias is a well known phenomenon in clinical literature,1 2 in which positive results have a better chance of being published, are published earlier, and are published in journals with high...

doi.org

Anecdote from Innis (1992) To quell his anxiety, a group of Tryon's students conducted an Ocean's Eleven style operation to deconstruct and transport a huge rat maze from one building to another while a second group of students distracted him on an out of town trip. doi.org/10.1037//000...

🚨 Journal of Comparative Physiology A #JCP-A has published a collection on "The #Honeybee #Odometer Controversy" 🐝 ↘️ link.springer.com/collections/... ↙️ Read and discuss the issue of the "most serious allegation of scientific misconduct in the history of #neuroethology" with students & colleagues 💬

Nice paper from Fuentealba et al. (2025) looking at the involvement of hippocampus in the emulation of conspecifics: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #Neuroscience #Hippocampus #PlaceCells #SpatialLearning

Emulation as a behavioral strategy underlying spatial observational learning in rats

Humans and several non-human species have shown the ability to learn by observing an experimented conspecific. A basic form of this learning is spatia…

sciencedirect.com

We are recruiting for 5 permanent staff positions (Prof, Senior-, Lecturer) including for 7T-MRI. Please have a look and share widely. (Closing date: May 12) www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Professor, Senior Lecturer/Lecturer and Lecturer posts - Glasgow City (GB) job with University of Glasgow | 12838283

University of Glasgow College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences  School of Psychology & Neuroscience Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience/Psy...

nature.com

Rate adaptation in a continuous attractor predicts the alternating left/right theta sweeps observed in hippocampus and mEC. Really nice computational model, backed up with a reanalysis of ephys data, from Widloski, Theurel and Foster: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Spontaneous alternation of place-cell sequences in the open field through spike frequency adaptation

Spatial sequences encoded by cells in the hippocampal-entorhinal region have been observed to spontaneously alternate across the animal’s midline duri…

sciencedirect.com

In 1950s/60s "curiosity" was one of the theories proposed for exploration in animals. The issue was that the theory (curiosity) could only be measured using the thing it was supposed to explain (exploration). Makes sense to look at this in humans, where you can just ask them how curious they are!

Carl Hodgetts@cjhodgetts.bsky.social · last yr.

This is a great (and accessible) summary of our latest @commspsychol.bsky.social paper, which examines the link between curiosity, spatial exploration, and memory within virtual environments. www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/29... Paper link 👉🏻: www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Ethologists and neuroscientists: What is a theoretical ethology paper that has shaped the way you think about behaviour? Here I'm not thinking experimental papers with a point, or even tools that are developed to prove a point - purely theoretical, making conceptual, general points.

Paper from Mainali et al. modelling place cells "across species and dimensionalities" doi.org/10.1016/j.ne... Unfortunately it overlooks our rodent place cell results in 3D: doi.org/10.1038/s414... Which arguably make the best comparison to flying bats 🤦 #Neuroscience #CognitiveNeuroscience

The place-cell representation of volumetric space in rats - Nature Communications

How the brain represents 3D space is poorly understood but important for understanding spatial cognition. Here the authors record place cells in rats climbing through a 3D environment and report that ...

doi.org

Nice paper from Subramanian & David Smith looking at time cells in the retrosplenial cortex: doi.org/10.1002/hipo... #Neuroscience #Neurobiology #Neurons #hippocampus

Time cells in the retrosplenial cortex

The retrosplenial cortex (RSC) is a key component of the brain's memory systems, with anatomical connections to the hippocampus, anterior thalamus, and entorhinal cortex. This circuit has been implic...

doi.org

I enjoyed this preprint from Ottaviani et al. a lot. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... "we found that the relative frequency of novelty terms (e.g. groundbreaking, innovative) nearly doubled" between 1997 and 2017. #Ecology #Metascience #AcademicChallenges

On the quest for novelty in ecology

The volume of scientific publications continues to grow, making it increasingly challenging for scholars to publish papers that capture readers’ attention. While making a truly significant discovery…

biorxiv.org

Ji et al, Burgess lab: phase precession, theta skipping & theta modulation of head direction cells in the anteroventral thalamic nucleus (AVN). Explained using a ring attractor model with theta input and firing rate adaptation: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #Neuroscience #Neurons

Phase Precession Relative to Turning Angle in Theta‐Modulated Head Direction Cells

Grid and place cells typically fire at progressively earlier phases within each cycle of the theta rhythm as rodents run across their firing fields, a phenomenon known as theta phase precession. Here...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Quite a nice paper/model. I really like that it doesn't explain place cells in a vacuum - it incorporates place/boundary/pbject/grid cells into a holistic representation of space that can be used for planning. Definitely check it out.

Jacob Bakermans@bakermansjjw.bsky.social · 2y ago

We are extremely grateful to Brad Pfeiffer and David Foster for sharing their data to enable these results. And to Éléonore Duvelle, @roddy-grieves.bsky.social and @hugospiers.bsky.social who shared another amazing dataset for us to reanalyse. doi.org/10.25493/7NJ... 8/9

Short preprint from Soldi et al. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... which I found quite interesting. Inactivation of dentate gyrus did not impact performance very much in a spatial task with overlapping elements. #Neuroscience #Hippocampus #BrainResearch #AnimalNavigation

The dentate gyrus provides flexibility for efficient spatial navigation

The hippocampus plays a critical role in spatial navigation and declarative memory. The dentate gyrus is the neurogenic region of the hippocampal formation and it has long been implicated in the fine ...

biorxiv.org

Interesting commentary onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... on a paper that was published a little while ago (doi.org/10.7554/eLif...) which claimed mice were taking shortcuts based on self-motion information alone. #AnimalNavigation #BehavioralNeuroscience #Shortcutting #AnimalBehavior

Geometry as a Guide: Enclosure Effects on Spatial Mapping (Commentary on Xu et al. 2024)

Geometry, rather than path integration, plays a central role in cognitive map formation. The interaction between grid and place cells relates to geometry coding. Experiments focusing on spatial navig...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Really nice experiment from Zutshi et al. looking at how the hippocampus encodes non-spatial variables, like auditory cue tones, while animals solve a spatial task: doi.org/10.1038/s415... #Neuroscience #Hippocampus #BrainScience

Hippocampal neuronal activity is aligned with action plans - Nature

Using high-density electrophysiological recordings, how internally generated cell assemblies are updated by action plans to meet external goals is explored.

doi.org