***New preprint from the lab*** showing “Generative replay across hippocampal-neocortical circuits”. In sleep we show spiking sequences in V1 (sensory neocortex!) that represent information that has not been directly experienced www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @bndu.ox.ac.uk @ndcnoxford.bsky.social

Generative replay across hippocampal-neocortical circuits

To make flexible decisions, the brain needs to make inferences between events that were not directly experienced together. In sharp-wave ripple (SWR) events, during periods of rest and sleep, spiking ...

biorxiv.org

*Are rodents a good model of the amygdala?* Probably not. Important comparative anatomy findings by Freixes, Medina, Desfilis. At the VI international Congress of Psychobiology, Seville, Spain.

Very happy to share this work on a preprint! Coauthored with @mikebrowning.bsky.social @Erdem Pulcu @lhuntneuro.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... How do we learn when rewards and punishments change independently—and how does this go awry in anxiety and depression?

Valence-specific representation of uncertainty in the anterior cingulate is impaired in those with affective symptoms

The ability to seek reward and avoid punishment is a fundamental survival instinct. In natural environments, however, the statistics of rewards and punishments can change independently of one another....

biorxiv.org

Clever use of a complex behavioral task to show that BLA dopamine tracks emotional salience, not value or prediction error. Threat/Safety cues drive larger, sustained signals than reward/neutral cues. Dopamine in the BLA is very much different than in the striatum.

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...

Congratulations to Adrien for this tour de force that redefines the relevant oscillations for memory processing in humans! It was great to be a part of it. @bndu.ox.ac.uk @ndcnoxford.bsky.social

@acausse.bsky.social · 2mo ago

🧵 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.

Exciting symposium on computational neuroscience and neuromodulation starting now at Aarhus! Pretty great line up.

Six researches. Six ambitious projects. The 2026 Lundbeck Foundation Fellowship recipients are tackling glioblastoma, viral meningitis, bacterial diagnostics, immune cell communication, brain aging, auditory hallucinations, and cellular repair. Read more here: https://ow.ly/grSe50Z4HXO

Delighted to share our new publication in @apertureohbm.bsky.social - the "Human Single-Neuron Pipeline" for managing human single-neuron research projects! It's an open-source resource of new & existing tools & resources curated for HSN projects: hsnpipeline.github.io

Aperture Neuro@apertureohbm.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Donoghue et al. introduce the Human Single-Neuron Pipeline, an open source processing pipeline for collecting and analyzing human single-neuron data: doi.org/10.52294/001... @ohbmossig.bsky.social @ohbmofficial.bsky.social #OpenDatasets #SpecialIssues

This is the May cover of NN but it has already been debunked on biorxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Such a clear statement about the ridiculous pace of publishing (not just NN).

Nature Neuroscience@natneuro.nature.com · 3mo ago

Check out our May issue! www.nature.com/neuro/volume...

New preprint! How do threat beliefs drive avoidance & what happens when avoidance prevents us from verifying them? New work showing a bidirectional link between beliefs and avoidance! Lucky to work w @ondrejzika.bsky.social @nicoschuck.bsky.social @tobywise.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/ps...

For many Iranian students, Neuromatch was one of the few bridges to the international neuroscience community. Iranian students and TAs have contributed so much to it. Many of us, including me, found neuroscience through Neuromatch. This decision by Trump’s gov is cruel, unjust and a loss for science

Neuromatch@neuromatch.bsky.social · 3mo ago

We have difficult news to share. Neuromatch's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) license renewal, which has allowed us to include participants residing in Iran since 2020, has been denied by the United States Government.

We are looking for two Research Assistants to conduct experiments and data analyses investigating the neural mechanisms of strategic and social decision-making using head-fixed (1) and freely-moving (1) behavioural paradigms in mice. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

UCL – University College London

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

ucl.ac.uk

👋 Happy to see this paper published in PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2529176123 Asking: is curiosity a homeostatic drive, or a policy learned through reinforcement? How can we tell, and why does it matter? 🧵👇 With Jane Mok, @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social, Caroline Marvin, and Daphna Shohamy 🙏

Learning reinforces curiosity for related information | PNAS

Human curiosity is dynamic, however the principles governing its fluctuations remain debated. Here, we test two competing hypotheses about how past...

pnas.org

Yaniv Abir@yanivabir.bsky.social · last yr.

What drives human curiosity? Is it a need to balance stimulation — or something we learn over time? In our 🚨 new preprint, we show that learning reinforces curiosity, especially for related content. osf.io/9bw6j_v2 w/ Jane Mok, @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social , Caroline Marvin, Daphna Shohamy 🧵👇

New work, now out in PLoS Biology. Using intracranial recordings & EEG, we find that the human STN rapidly engages / releases motor inhibition depending on task context, does so in tight accord w/ frontal cortex, and shows little to no lateralization while doing so. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

A cortico-subthalamic circuit rapidly engages and releases inhibition of specific movements depending on the environmental context

How does the human brain stop movements under realistic conditions? Using intracranial recordings and multi-variate EEG decoding, this study shows that a fronto-basal ganglia circuit featuring the sub...

journals.plos.org

Jan R. Wessel@janw.bsky.social · 7mo ago

New preprint from the lab, led by post-doc @cheolsoh.bsky.social and former post-doc Mario Hervault (now Asst Prof at UGrenoble). The boys used synchronous intracranial recordings from the human subthalamic nucleus & EEG to study β bursts during global & selective response inhibition. Details in 🧵

🚨Next week's talk at ARC Join us for a talk by Professor Lilian Weber (@lilweb.bsky.social, Osnabrück University). 📅 23 April 11:00 (Local Time Germany) @mpib-berlin.bsky.social or online See the link for details👇 www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/events/45441...

ARC Talk: Lilian Weber, Osnabrück University: Rethinking reinforcement learning in biological agents: the role of internal states and inference in generating reward signals

mpib-berlin.mpg.de

I have just finished reading The Technology of Teaching by Skinner it confirmed two ideas for me. First, the image of Skinner as an “evil” behaviorist is false. Reading him directly, I find a profoundly humanist thinker. Second, he may be more useful than expected in our AI-powered era Few takeaways

🧠🌍 April 11th was World Parkinson’s Day. We recognise the global impact of Parkinson’s and the urgent need for continued research. Women in Neuroscience UK proudly supports the scientists and healthcare professionals working to transform Parkinson’s treatment.

Amazing study and the coolest results (from my point of view!) is that LC norepinephrine neurons projecting to the frontal cortex encode reward prediction error

Jeremiah Cohen@jeremiahycohen.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Delighted to share our discoveries about one of the brain's neurotransmitter systems: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Together with colleagues at the @alleninstitute.org, we have learned a lot about a tiny cluster of neurons in the brainstem locus coeruleus (LC) that releases norepinephrine (NE). 1

We're so proud of this one - great to see it out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social now! See Johannes' threads for what we did & found. Excited to be using TUS and what it will teach us about the neural basis of affective cognition ✨

Johannes Algermissen@johalgermissen.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Very happy our first paper using ultrasound stimulation (TUS) to stimulate the human amygdala (BLA) got out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social today! 🎉🥳🔊Great FUN with co-first authors @mirunmigyu.bsky.social @lilweb.bsky.social in @mkflugge.bsky.social 's lab! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Very happy our first paper using ultrasound stimulation (TUS) to stimulate the human amygdala (BLA) got out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social today! 🎉🥳🔊Great FUN with co-first authors @mirunmigyu.bsky.social @lilweb.bsky.social in @mkflugge.bsky.social 's lab! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Low-intensity focused ultrasound to human amygdala reveals a causal role in ambiguous emotion processing and alters local and network activity

The amygdala shows abnormal metabolism in depression, a disorder marked by altered emotion, motivation, and learning. Yet its causal role in these pro…

sciencedirect.com

⭐️PhD Cognitive/Computational Psychology ⭐️ Use Reinforcement Learning + computational modelling to study how we form beliefs in the face of unreliable information (with me +Tali Sharot). Full funding for those eligible for UK home fees. Deadline 18/5. Please share! @queenmarycbb.bsky.social

What are the systems in neuroscience that we really have something that we can call “explanation” at all relevant levels, other than reflexive feed-forward like circuits. Here are a few that I would argue are getting there. Obviously not complete explanations but genuinely satisfying.

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Neuroscience has become increasingly concerned with prediction, and machine learning with causal explanation, with each field adopting methods from the other, writes @gershbrain.bsky.social. Will this bring us closer to understanding neural systems? www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...

My close friend/colleague (Dr Pengfei Xu) has published an impressive 7-yr prospective study with nearly 400 young people, showing that functional brain dynamics in early childhood relate to adolescent anxiety and depression. www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S000... #PsychSciSky

Childhood electroencephalographic signatures predict distinct developmental trajectories to adolescent anxiety and depression

Adolescence is a vulnerable period for the onset of anxiety and depression, yet their neurodevelopmental origins remain unclear.

biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com

Excited to share that @russpoldrack.org will be speaking at @princeton.edu this Tuesday, March 24! Talk: "The Promise and Perils of AI-Assisted Coding in Science" 12:00 PM ET Workshop: "Testing and Validating Code Developed Using AI" 11:00 AM ET The Zoom is open to all (see flyer for details)!

*** New paper from the lab in Nature Comms !! *** “Noradrenaline causes a spread of association in the hippocampal cognitive map” by the amazing @reneecabbage.bsky.social in collab. w labs of Jill O’Reilly, Will Clarke, and modeling from Prakriti Parthasarathy and @tpvogels.bsky.social, see below!

Renée Koolschijn@reneecabbage.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Very pleased to share that our study “Noradrenaline causes a spread of association in the hippocampal cognitive map” is out in @natcomms.nature.com (my final PhD paper, only 3.5 years post PhD! 🙃) Find the paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy to share our latest study on domain specificity in interoceptive psychophysics!

Leah Banellis@leahbanellis.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Excited to share that our work on organ-specific interoception is now published in Communications Psychology! www.nature.com/articles/s44... @micahgallen.com @the-ecg.org

Today I am excited to introduce respyra - an open-source Python toolbox for respiratory tracking experiments in interoception research! Now on PyPI (pip install respyra) with a preprint on PsyArXiv: osf.io/preprints/ps... GitHub: github.com/embodied-com...

We are recruiting! Postdoctoral research fellow at www.sdn-lab.org, studying the computational & neural basis of social decision-making. Birmingham is a fantastic & affordable place to live, with one of the youngest populations in Europe & over 600 parks. Please share! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQO275/p...

Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Social Decision Neuroscience at University of Birmingham

Explore an exciting academic career as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Social Decision Neuroscience. Don't miss out on other academic jobs. Click to apply and explore more opportunities.

jobs.ac.uk

Thrilled that my paper is out in the @nature.com. We explored how the brain builds complex tasks by compositionally combining simpler sub-task representations. The brain flexibly performs multiple tasks by dynamically reusing neural subspaces for sensory inputs and motor actions rdcu.be/eRVUk

Building compositional tasks with shared neural subspaces

Nature - The brain can flexibly perform multiple tasks by compositionally combining task-relevant neural representations.

rdcu.be