Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Hayoung Song

Hongji Kim @hongjikim.bsky.social · 12h

New paper out! Revisiting the DMN's self-related processing from an embodied view🧠💪 Huge thanks to
@choongwanwoo.bsky.social and @jeongin-lee00.bsky.social for enriching my internal model with great insights and fun discussions along the way!

Choong-Wan (Wani) Woo @choongwanwoo.bsky.social · 23h

Our new paper is out in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences; a perspective paper on the DMN, titled "Embodying the default mode network: self-related processing from an embodied perspective"
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Embodying the default mode network: self-related processing from an embodied perspective

www.sciencedirect.com

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Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social · 16h

Six of the nine Nobel Prize winners this year work in the U.S.
Three of the six were born outside the U.S., which is the pattern most years. No country has benefited more from welcoming immigrants from around the world.
www.nobelprize.org

The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org

The Nobel Prize rewards science, humanism and peace efforts. This is one of the central concepts in the will of Alfred Nobel, and it also permeates the outreach activities that have been developed for...

www.nobelprize.org

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Jean Luo @jeanieluo.bsky.social · 5d

Very excited to share that my first paper, with Peter Mende-Siedlecki and @leorhackel.bsky.social, is out now in @commspsychol.nature.com! ☺️

Can getting more rewards make you feel more skilled, even if your performance doesn't change?

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Rewards bias self-evaluations of ability - Communications Psychology

People often receive rewards for good performance, but what happens when rewards do not reflect ability? Two behavioral studies suggest that rewards can impact how we evaluate our own ability, above and beyond the impact of actual performance.

www.nature.com

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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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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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Matthieu Chidharom @matthieu-mx.bsky.social · 10d

1/ Why are we so easily distracted? 🧠 In our new EEG preprint w/ Henry Jones, @monicarosenb.bsky.social and @edvogel.bsky.social we show that distractibility is associated w/ reduced neural connectivity — and can be predicted from EEG with ~80% accuracy using machine learning.

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Marlene Cohen @marlenecohen.bsky.social · 15d

New preprint! How can you remember an image you saw once, even after seeing thousands of them? We find a role for humble mid-level visual cortex in high-capacity, one-shot learning. doi.org/10.1101/2025.09.22.677855 🧵🧪1/

Neuronal signatures of successful one-shot memory in mid-level visual cortex

High-capacity, one-shot visual recognition memory challenges theories of learning and neural coding because it requires rapid, robust, and durable representations. Most studies have focused on the hip...

doi.org

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Brynn Sherman @brynnsherman.bsky.social · 19d

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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Hayoung Song @hayoungsong.bsky.social · 21d

This is such a well crafted study with compelling findings!👏🎊

Jonathan F. Kominsky @jfkominsky.bsky.social · 22d

Very excited to announce my student Andreas Arslan's first paper, "Causal coherence improves episodic memory of dynamic events" in Cognition!

Out now open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Andreas isn't on bsky, but he very kindly wrote a summary thread for me to share.

🧵 (1/24)

Causal coherence improves episodic memory of dynamic events

“Episodes” in memory are formed by the experience of dynamic events that unfold over time. However, just because a series of events unfold sequentiall…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Tristan Yates @tristansyates.bsky.social · 22d

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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Johannah Völler @jvoeller.bsky.social · 26d

👩‍💻 New preprint out (FIRST one of my PhD journey) with the incredible @lindedomingo.bsky.social @ortiztudela.bsky.social @gonzalezgarcia.bsky.social

"From sudden perceptual learning to enduring engrams: A representational perspective" 🧠

doi.org/10.31234/osf...

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Sebastian Michelmann @s-michelmann.bsky.social · Sep 5

🚀Excited to share our project: Canonical Representational Mapping for Cognitive Neuroscience. @schottdorflab.bsky.social and I propose a novel multivariate method to isolate neural representations aligned with specific cognitive hypotheses 🧵https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.01.673485v1

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Buddhika Bellana @buddhikabellana.bsky.social · Sep 5

How might stories shed light on brain function? Check out this opinion piece by @alexbarnett.bsky.social and I about the DMN and "situation models" -- our understanding of the current "state of affairs" in a story (or even experience).

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

On the left: an illustration from Brooke's 1904 rendition of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, where Little bear discovers their favourite chair is broken 😲. On the right, a sketch of what a corresponding "situation model" might contain.

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Yuan Chang Leong @ycleong.bsky.social · Sep 5

check out @hayoungsong.bsky.social's new work combining RNNs, fMRI and verbal reports to study how the brain represents and retrieves causally related memories while watching a TV episode! has been super fun to be part of this!

Hayoung Song @hayoungsong.bsky.social · Sep 5

How does the brain🧠 make causal inferences and use memories to understand narratives🎬?

We built an RNN🤖 with key-value episodic memory that learns causal relationships between events and retrieves memories like humans do!

Preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

w/ @qlu.bsky.social, Tan Nguyen &👇

A neural network with episodic memory learns causal relationships between narrative events

Humans reflect on past memories to make sense of an ongoing event. Past work has shown that people retrieve causally related past events during comprehension, but the exact process by which this causa...

www.biorxiv.org

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Qihong (Q) Lu @qlu.bsky.social · Sep 5

Key-value memory network can learn to represent event memories by their causal relations to support event cognition!
Congrats to @hayoungsong.bsky.social on this exciting paper! So fun to be involved!

Hayoung Song @hayoungsong.bsky.social · Sep 5

How does the brain🧠 make causal inferences and use memories to understand narratives🎬?

We built an RNN🤖 with key-value episodic memory that learns causal relationships between events and retrieves memories like humans do!

Preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

w/ @qlu.bsky.social, Tan Nguyen &👇

A neural network with episodic memory learns causal relationships between narrative events

Humans reflect on past memories to make sense of an ongoing event. Past work has shown that people retrieve causally related past events during comprehension, but the exact process by which this causa...

www.biorxiv.org

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Hayoung Song @hayoungsong.bsky.social · Sep 5

This was a huge team effort ⭐: @qlu.bsky.social, Tan Nguyen, Janice Chen, @ycleong.bsky.social, @monicarosenb.bsky.social, ShiNung Ching, @jzacks.bsky.social
We welcome feedback!

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Hayoung Song @hayoungsong.bsky.social · Sep 5

The model watched a tv drama🎬 like participants in a previous fMRI study.
From lesioning each component of the model, we found that the model learns causal structure by dissociating the representations used for memory encoding (value) and retrieval (key).

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Hayoung Song @hayoungsong.bsky.social · Sep 5

How does the brain🧠 make causal inferences and use memories to understand narratives🎬?

We built an RNN🤖 with key-value episodic memory that learns causal relationships between events and retrieves memories like humans do!

Preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

w/ @qlu.bsky.social, Tan Nguyen &👇

A neural network with episodic memory learns causal relationships between narrative events

Humans reflect on past memories to make sense of an ongoing event. Past work has shown that people retrieve causally related past events during comprehension, but the exact process by which this causa...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Hayoung Song

Adi Upadhyayula @adibuoy23.bsky.social · Sep 3

1/ 🚨 Preprint alert!
How does the brain make sense of continuous experience?
We find that continuous experiences can be compressed using a subset of key moments that dominate comprehension and recall.
👉 https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.30.673233

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Jin Ke @jinke.bsky.social · Aug 20

New preprint! 🧠

Our mind wanders at rest. By periodically probing ongoing thoughts during resting-state fMRI, we show these thoughts are reflected in brain network dynamics and contribute to pervasive links between functional brain architecture and everyday behavior (1/10).
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Ongoing thoughts at rest reflect functional brain organization and behavior

Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC)-brain connectivity observed when people rest with no external tasks-predicts individual differences in behavior. Yet, rest is not idle; it involves streams...

www.biorxiv.org

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Hayoung Song @hayoungsong.bsky.social · Aug 12

This has been an immense team effort w/ Ruiqi Chen, @tommybotch.bsky.social, Todd Braver, @monicarosenb.bsky.social, @jzacks.bsky.social, & ShiNung Ching

We would appreciate your feedback on the work!

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Hayoung Song @hayoungsong.bsky.social · Aug 12

Preprint⭐
Our attention changes over time and differs across contexts—which is reflected in the brain🧠 Fitting a dynamical systems model to fMRI data, we find that the geometry of neural dynamics along the attractor landscape reflects such changes in attention!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Geometry of neural dynamics along the cortical attractor landscape reflects changes in attention

The brain is a complex dynamical system whose activity reflects changes in internal states, such as attention. While prior work has shown that large-scale brain activity reflects attention, the mechan...

www.biorxiv.org

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Emily G. Jacobs @emilyjacobs.bsky.social · Aug 1

We’re hiring! Pls share widely:

In conjunction w/ the @bowers-wbhi.bsky.social, my team is recruiting a full-time clinical research coordinator to assist with research efforts at UC Santa Barbara. 1-2 yrs experience in MRI data collection preferred.

Submit apps to: recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/JPF02974

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Nia B. @niaberrian.bsky.social · Jun 27

My first time presenting this line of work, linking environmental exposures, attention problems, and attention-related brain networks in the ABCD Study at the MSTP retreat! Thank you to my collaborators for your [email protected] @ariellekeller.bsky.social and others not on bluesky.

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John Kounios @johnkounios.bsky.social · Jun 25

"Eureka! The brain science behind lightbulb moments" - Excellent coverage in Nature of research on the neuroscience of Aha moments, including our research on this phenomenon. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Eureka! The brain science behind lightbulb moments

Experiences of insight come with a burst of brain activity — and a memory boost.

www.nature.com

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