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Tristan Yates

@tristansyates.bsky.social

1.3K followers 490 following 65 posts

baby brain scientist, perception and memory and events || PhD @yale || postdoc @columbia || she/her https://tristansyates.github.io/

tristansyates.github.io

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Tristan Yates @tristansyates.bsky.social · Mar 20

Why do we not remember being a baby? One idea is that the hippocampus, which is essential for episodic memory in adults, is too immature to form individual memories in infancy. We tested this using awake infant fMRI, new in @science.org #ScienceResearch www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Hippocampal encoding of memories in human infants

Humans lack memories for specific events from the first few years of life. We investigated the mechanistic basis of this infantile amnesia by scanning the brains of awake infants with functional magne...

www.science.org

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Sam Nastase @samnastase.bsky.social · 7d

I'm recruiting PhD students to join my new lab in Fall 2026! The Shared Minds Lab at @usc.edu will combine deep learning and ecological human neuroscience to better understand how we communicate our thoughts from one brain to another.

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Lexi Decker @lexidecker.bsky.social · 7d

Excited to share that I'm joining WashU in January as an Assistant Prof in Psych & Brain Sciences! 🧠✨!

I'm also recruiting grad students to start next September - come hang out with us! Details about our lab here: www.deckerlab.com

Reposts are very welcome! 🙌 Please help spread the word!

DeckerLab

www.deckerlab.com

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Fetal, Infant, & Toddler Neuroimaging Group—FIT’NG @fitngin.bsky.social · 18d

The FIT'NG Trainee Committee is excited to be recruiting new members!

It’s a great way to:
✨ Build your network
✨ Gain leadership experience
✨ Shape programming for trainees across the society

Interested? Fill out our form by September 23rd: tinyurl.com/TraineeCommi...

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Brynn Sherman @brynnsherman.bsky.social · 20d

Last month, I launched my lab at Ohio State. Our lab website is now live, and we're recruiting graduate students this cycle! If you're interested in the cognitive (neuro)science of learning & memory, please reach out!

www.momentslab.org

Moments Lab

www.momentslab.org

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Tristan Yates @tristansyates.bsky.social · 23d

How does spontaneous memory reinstatement at rest relate to episodic memory during development? And how do early experiences influence neural mechanisms of episodic memory encoding and reinstatement? New preprint! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Spontaneous reinstatement of episodic memories in the developing human brain

The hippocampus supports episodic memories in development, and yet how the brain stabilizes these memories determines their long-term accessibility. This study examined how episodic memories formed in...

www.biorxiv.org

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Sami Yousif @samiyousif.bsky.social · 23d

I am recruiting graduate students for Fall 2026 through both the cognitive and developmental areas at Ohio State. If you are interested in spatial cognition, visual perception, and/or mental representation -- please reach out! I'd love to hear from you.

www.cogdevlab.org

PCDL @ OSU

www.cogdevlab.org

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Julia Moser @drjuliamoser.bsky.social · Aug 29

Is precision functional brain imaging in babies possible? YES! We show this in not one but two new preprints out of WashU and @umn-midb.bsky.social! 1️⃣: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 2️⃣: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🐣👶🧠

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Cliona O'Doherty @clionaod.bsky.social · Sep 7

It's been a great FIT'NG so far 🧠👶🏻 I'm always excited to present the work from the amazing FOUNDCOG team, and chat all things developmental cog comp neuro. Feel free to reach out to me or find me on the last day tomorrow!

Fetal, Infant, & Toddler Neuroimaging Group—FIT’NG @fitngin.bsky.social · Sep 7

Cliona O'Doherty present pioneering work relating awake infant fMRI data to adults and computational models of vision, with strong correspondence at 2 months of age!

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Flux Society @fluxsociety.bsky.social · Aug 24

Delve into the developing brain at "Back to Basics: Components & Mechanisms of Memory Development." From infant fMRI to rodent studies on amnesia, this symposium explores how the memory network, especially the hippocampus, changes across the lifespan. Join us! #FluxCongress2025

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Tristan Yates @tristansyates.bsky.social · Sep 7

It’s been such an inspiring week at #flux2025 in the beautiful city of Dublin! Now the excitement continues with #FITNG2025 🧠💚

Dr. Jennifer Pfeifer @jenndsn.bsky.social · Sep 4

“Science is not only what we produce, it’s how we relate.” 💚 #flux2025 — President Eveline Crone @fluxsociety.bsky.social

Reposted by Tristan Yates

Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · Sep 2

How do the brain’s event representations change as we gain familiarity with an experience?

Brain regions’ representations can become coarser or finer as event familiarity increases. Fine-tuning predicts memory recall.

Excited to share this work with Narjes Al-Zahli & @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social!

Repeated Viewing of a Narrative Movie Changes Event Timescales in The Brain

Many experiences occur repeatedly throughout our lives: we might watch the same movie more than once and listen to the same song on repeat. How does the brain modify its representations of events when...

www.biorxiv.org

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Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · Aug 23

Game on.

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steven t. piantadosi @spiantado.bsky.social · Aug 20

Preschoolers Selectively Attend to Speech That They Can Learn More From by ‪@ruthefoushee.bsky.social‬ and colleagues
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Preschoolers Selectively Attend to Speech That They Can Learn More From

We introduce a novel method to test a classic idea in developmental science that children's attention to a stimulus is driven by how much they can learn from it. Preschoolers (4–6 years, M=4.6${\it M...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Erica Busch @elbusch.bsky.social · Aug 12

Excited to be in Amsterdam for #CCN2025! Come learn about a project combining many of my favorite interests - naturalistic neuroimaging, development, & manifold learning (of course). Catch me at poster C181 on Fri - “Intrinsic dimensionality of brain activity manifolds across tasks and development”

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Tristan Yates @tristansyates.bsky.social · Aug 8

Every active shooter situation is a failure of our system. Hurts deeply when it’s a place you love.

Colette Delawalla @cdelawalla.bsky.social · Aug 8

An active shooter at Emory. This makes me sick. It’s the fucking guns.

Reposted by Tristan Yates

International Congress of Infant Studies @infantstudies.bsky.social · Jul 31

Lazarus et al. (2025): A simple act with a lasting impact: Holding babies skin-to-skin in the NICU helped support their development and reduced differences linked to family income. Early touch can be a powerful way to promote equity from the very start #infancypapers doi.org/10.1111/infa...

doi.org

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Tess Forest @tessforest.bsky.social · Aug 6

Happy to share "The Dynamics of Caregiver Unpredictability Shape Moment-to-Moment Infant Looking During Dyadic Interaction," out now in Child Development thanks to a large team of people I worked on this with! srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirec...

<em>Child Development</em> | SRCD Journal | Wiley Online Library

Cognitive development is associated with how predictable caregivers are, but the mechanisms driving this are unclear. One possibility is caregiver predictability initially shapes how infants gather i...

srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Paul Young @paulgyoung.bsky.social · Aug 2

Happy to have this work out! Using cryo-EM and electrophysiology, we clarify the mechanism of a small molecule inhibitor of CFTR that could have some important clinical applications.
rdcu.be/eyVyq

Structure of CFTR bound to (R)-BPO-27 unveils a pore-blockage mechanism

Nature Communications - Hyperactivation of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) is central to the pathogenesis of secretory diarrheas and autosomal dominant polycystic...

rdcu.be

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Brynn Sherman @brynnsherman.bsky.social · Jul 24

I'm recruiting a lab manager for my soon-to-be-launched lab at Ohio State! If you know of any recent grads who may be interested both in helping to build the lab and in developing skills in the cognitive neuroscience of memory, please share!

osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/OSUCar...

Research Associate

Screen reader users may encounter difficulty with this site. For assistance with applying, please contact [email protected]. If you have questions while submitting an application, pleas...

osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com

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Sam McDougle @actlab.bsky.social · Jul 24

Happy to announce that my lab @ Yale Psychology (actcompthink.org) will be accepting PhD applications this year (for start in Fall '26)!

Come for the fun experiments on human learning, memory, & skilled behavior, stay for the best 🍕 in the US.

Please reach out if you have any questions!

Homepage of the Action, Computation, & Thinking (ACT) Lab, Yale department of psychology

actcompthink.org

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Tristan Yates @tristansyates.bsky.social · Jul 22

As a fraternal twin myself, this is what got me into psychology and neuroscience!

Tristan Yates @tristansyates.bsky.social · Jul 18

This was so fun to write! Grateful to ICIS and the Baby Blog for the space to reflect on infant memory

International Congress of Infant Studies @infantstudies.bsky.social · Jul 17

New on the Baby Blog - Episodic-like memory in infancy: Insights from the developing hippocampus by Tristan S. Yates #EarlyYears #DevPsychSky #PsychSciSky #infantstudies infantstudies.org/episodic-lik...

Text: Latest from the Baby Blog - Episodic-like memory in infancy: Insights from the developing hippocampus by Tristan S. Yates against an image background of a baby lying on its back holding a book

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Zack Labe @zacklabe.com · Jul 8

I can't stress enough how close U.S. science is to the cliff.

"Numbers released in May by the National Science Foundation (NSF) indicate that if Congress approves the cuts to the agency proposed by the White House, the number of early-career researchers it supports could fall by 78%" (@science.org)

‘It’s a nightmare.’ U.S. funding cuts threaten academic science jobs at all levels

“There is a lot of pressure to essentially leave the country or not pursue research,” one Ph.D. student says

www.science.org

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Marta Silva @martamasilva.bsky.social · Jul 1

🧠 Paper out!

We investigated how hippocampal and cortical ripples support memory during movie watching. We found that:

🎬 Hippocampal ripples mark event boundaries
🧩 Cortical ripples predict later recall

Ripples may help transform real-life experiences into lasting memories!

rdcu.be/eui9l

Movie-watching evokes ripple-like activity within events and at event boundaries

Nature Communications - The neural processes involved in memory formation for realistic experiences remain poorly understood. Here, the authors found that ripple-like activity in the human...

rdcu.be

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Damien Fair @drdamienfair.bsky.social · Jun 29

Alert! ... for the child development world!

@fluxsociety.bsky.social @fitngin.bsky.social ‪

The Healthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study has released its first data wave - it’s massive.

Check here:
docs.hbcdstudy.org

and here:
nbdc-datahub.org

Here’s why it matters 🧠🍼

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