Thackery Brown
@thackerybrown.bsky.social
Cognitive Neuroscientist interested in memory, emotion, and decision-making and their intersection in spatial navigation https://maplab.gatech.edu/ navsci.gatech.edu
If a slop generator can produce a "graphical abstract" considered suitable for publication "in minutes", then "graphical abstracts" don't add anything of material value to the publication.
Jeffrey Perkel (he/him)@jperkel.bsky.social · 2w agoAlso new @nature.com, how to use #AI to create a graphical abstract in minutes. By Ananya Thakur. 🧪🎨🤖 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
New article! How do the irregular boundaries in our environment shape our spatial memory? We show both distortion and facilitation, marked individual differences, and an account of why @gt-neuro.bsky.social @gtsciences.bsky.social @crane-navsci.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Environment geometry alters sequential route learning and its integration into cognitive maps - Nature Communications
Theories disagree whether environments with irregular layouts impair spatial memory or help us stay oriented. The authors show that spatial memory can be enhanced or disrupted depending on where we ar...
nature.com
New article with @yirenr.bsky.social ! Memory for pairs of visual stimuli can be strengthened by music as a contextual backdrop. Critically, this influence extends to indirect relational associations more---v @gtsciences.bsky.social @gt-neuro.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.3...
Music enhances associative generalization: Evidence from a memory integration task - Memory & Cognition
Successful knowledge generalization requires integrating overlapping experiences into flexible memory representations that support inference beyond direct experience. Although context is known to infl...
link.springer.com
This is just eye watering, and tone-deaf to the times we are in
Here's the old steam engine at Georgia Tech, photographed on a vintage camera and developed in a green coffee solution Come visit us sometime @gtsciences.bsky.social !
New paper! We examined how affective experience+drive to explore spaces can shape memory, emphasizing that "complexity" is a moderator and only part of the story for configural learning @crane-navsci.bsky.social @gtsciences.bsky.social @gt-neuro.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
“The architecture of curiosity: How spatial configuration influences affect, exploration, and memory”
Curiosity is a key driver of exploration and learning. Prior empirical studies have largely focused on internal mechanisms of curiosity and not its in…
sciencedirect.com
Spatial cognition has been the theme at CRaNE 2026 @crane-navsci.bsky.social today. Loved @russellepstein.bsky.social's keynote on how the brain builds cognitive maps. Looking forward to my panel tomorrow with Danny Dilks & @noranewcombe.bsky.social on how spatial cognition develops!
We're excited to hear all about your research in one week at the Conference for Research and Education in Navigation! navsci.gatech.edu/cranecon26/ Campus photos of courtesy of my amateur 35mm photography ;-) @gtsciences.bsky.social @gt-neuro.bsky.social @crane-navsci.bsky.social
It finally came in the mail! It was a pleasure to be part of this unique and stimulating experience with @noranewcombe.bsky.social and Ken Cheng (and many colleagues!)
Please sign and share this petition to protect our Iranian students and colleagues www.change.org/p/emergency-...
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Emergency Petition to Protect Iranian Students, Scholars, and Professionals in the United
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1 mo. left to submit an abstract for the Conference for Research and Education in Navigation! We have a stellar lineup of speakers and submitted talks and posters already! @aliprestonphd.bsky.social @noranewcombe.bsky.social @russellepstein.bsky.social @tammyish.bsky.social @gtsciences.bsky.social
New paper out in JEP:General, led by uber-productive grad student Ricardo Morales Torres (@rmt93.bsky.social): We use behavior and RNNs to show that object semantics protect visual WM against visual interference but increase susceptibility to semantic interference. psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-...
APA PsycNet
psycnet.apa.org
Check out this fascinating article aging.jmir.org/2026/1/e79224
Egocentric Spatial Memory Deficit in Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment Revealed Through Virtual Reality: Cross-Sectional Study
Background: Spatial navigation relies on egocentric and allocentric frames of reference, with the latter critically impaired in Alzheimer disease (AD) due to hippocampal involvement. Recent evidence s...
aging.jmir.org
A half-century old question may have its final answer. Using high-resolution #Mini2P microscopes, we find no evidence of local topography in #PlaceCells. Place fields of neighbouring cells are no more similar than those of randomly selected cells. 🧠🗺️ Out now in @pnas.org www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Place cells in CA1 lack topographical organization of firing locations | PNAS
Topography is a well-described and well-known concept for cortical organization in primary sensory and motor cortices of mammalian brains. Similar ...
pnas.org
Excited for @crane-navsci.bsky.social conference! Our keynote speaker is @russellepstein.bsky.social, with a panel @noranewcombe.bsky.social @aliprestonphd.bsky.social and Daniel Dilks. This is a super intimate and interdisciplinary conference focused on spatial cognition. Submissions are open!
Please share - we hope to see you and your work in May!
Center for Research and Education in Navigation@crane-navsci.bsky.social · 6mo agoPlease share. Registration is live! Come join us to talk spatial memory, navigation, computation, and design at the next Conference for Research and Education in Navigation. Wonderful speakers+panelists, and we hope to see your work there too! @gt-neuro.bsky.social @gtsciences.bsky.social
The Hippocampal Subfields Group standardized+reliable protocol for defining hippocampal body subfields in MR images is published! This is the result of a massive international effort. Check it out and keep your eyes peeled for training events from our raters onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Harmonized Protocol for Subfield Segmentation in the Hippocampal Body on High‐Resolution In Vivo MRI From the Hippocampal Subfields Group (HSG)
Hippocampal subfields differentially develop and age, and they vary in vulnerability to neurodegenerative diseases. Innovation in high-resolution imaging has accelerated clinical research on human hi....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Is it the definition of madness that I keep pouring countless hours into developing NIH proposals?
The hippocampal map has its own attentional control signal! Our new study reveals that theta #sweeps can be instantly biased towards behaviourally relevant locations. See 📹 in post 4/6 and preprint here 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵(1/6)
Attention-like regulation of theta sweeps in the brain's spatial navigation circuit
Spatial attention supports navigation by prioritizing information from selected locations. A candidate neural mechanism is provided by theta-paced sweeps in grid- and place-cell population activity, which sample nearby space in a left-right-alternating pattern coordinated by parasubicular direction signals. During exploration, this alternation promotes uniform spatial coverage, but whether sweeps can be flexibly tuned to locations of particular interest remains unclear. Using large-scale Neuropixels recordings in freely-behaving rats, we show that sweeps and direction signals are rapidly and dynamically modulated: they track moving targets during pursuit, precede orienting responses during immobility, and reverse during backward locomotion — without prior spatial learning. Similar modulation occurs during REM sleep. Canonical head-direction signals remain head-aligned. These findings identify sweeps as a flexible, attention-like mechanism for selectively sampling allocentric cognitive maps. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. European Research Council, Synergy Grant 951319 (EIM) The Research Council of Norway, Centre of Neural Computation 223262 (EIM, MBM), Centre for Algorithms in the Cortex 332640 (EIM, MBM), National Infrastructure grant (NORBRAIN, 295721 and 350201) The Kavli Foundation, https://ror.org/00kztt736 Ministry of Science and Education, Norway (EIM, MBM) Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences; NTNU, Norway (AZV)
biorxiv.org
Planning + navigating novel shortcuts differently tax vmPFC subregions Shortcuts differing more from prior experience are more demanding Posterior vmPFC functions more closely resemble hippocampus and event separation @crane-navsci.bsky.social @paulinamaxim.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
Redirecting
doi.org
Kind of awesome belated Christmas gift from my mom
🚨 Our latest preprint: A new tool to provide assessments of experience of the built environment: the NDIX. This has been now deployed in 4 studies, being written up. Here is the methods preprint with a starcast of co-authors:
PsyArXivBot@psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 10mo agoThe NeuroDesign/NeuroArchitecture Index (NDIX): Development of a method to evaluate the impact of the built environment on health, cognitive performance, and wellbeing: https://osf.io/8369k
The CRaNE center is now on Bluesky, with a new collab pub to share! Please follow for news of our members' science and our conferences and workshops! @tammyish.bsky.social @shiyiliang.bsky.social @paulinamaxim.bsky.social @gtsciences.bsky.social @gt-neuro.bsky.social
Center for Research and Education in Navigation@crane-navsci.bsky.social · 10mo agoNew collaborative publication between GT and Emory CRaNE members - introducing the NARA and a new open-source virtual city environment for assessing configural spatial memory, led by Yasmine Bassil, M. Borich @thackerybrown.bsky.social @gtsciences.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Going to ANFA? Check out Simin's talk on our research into how the built environment shapes memory through curiosity. I'm proud of her for the special recognition she's received!
It was an honor to get to present at the NTNU last week. And for those who are curious, Trondheim is a gorgeous city
🧠🎵 OUR NEW PREPRINT: Familiar melodies hijack your brain's learning networks—literally rewiring visual sequence processing from struggle mode to flow state. @thackerybrown.bsky.social 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Music Scaffolds Visual Statistical Sequence Learning Through Network-Level Reorganization in the Brain
Statistical learning—the ability to extract patterns from noisy continuous experiences—is fundamental to human cognition. Yet, how contextual factors shape this process remains poorly understood. Musi...
biorxiv.org
