Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

James Antony

@jameswardantony.bsky.social

2.9K followers 1K following 37 posts

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

James Antony @jameswardantony.bsky.social · Jan 24

I want to highlight a special issue in honor of Sarah DuBrow, a brilliant scientist and dear friend who passed away in 2022.

We contributed a paper in which we disentangled the importance of temporal and causal relationships while participants recalled the non-linear narrative, Memento. 🧵 ⬇️ 1/9

Deepu Murty @vpmurty.bsky.social · Nov 23

I want to draw attention to a special issue that Lila Davachi and I put together to memorialize our friend and colleague Sarah DuBrow. It’s full of papers inspired by her work and her being from a group of collaborators, friends, and fans! Thanks @bradpostle.bsky.social for helping make this happen.

1 17 41

Reposted by James Antony

Jacinda Taggett @jacindataggett.bsky.social · 1d

You learn better when you test yourself on an answer before you study it? Even more counterintuitive, our findings showcase that there is not one direct mechanism to this effect.
Thank you @charan-neuro.bsky.social , @xiaonanl.bsky.social , and @jameswardantony.bsky.social !
doi.org/10.1037/xlm0...

APA PsycNet

doi.org

2 7

Reposted by James Antony

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

4 30 92

Reposted by James Antony

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

1 37 120

Reposted by James Antony

Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · Aug 31

Here is a gift link. I know people have feelings about the times but this is free and reading this should make you very very mad and then you should do something:

In Trump’s Federal Work Force Cuts, Black Women Are Among the Hardest Hit

www.nytimes.com

12 150 310

Reposted by James Antony

Eitan Schechtman @eitans.bsky.social · Aug 28

New opinion piece!

@amirtal.bsky.social and I argue that "wake reactivation" is not a scientifically useful construct; It encompasses nonconscious & conscious processes w/ varying levels of elaboration & diverging consequences, leading to conflicting results

authors.elsevier.com/a/1lgli4sIRvW-LQ

authors.elsevier.com

1 16 28

Reposted by James Antony

john sakon @johnsakon.bsky.social · Aug 28

Excited to present our new work reading minds!

Ok, not *that* kind of mind reading, but we have created a deep learning method capable of using single neuron recordings from people watching episodes of TV that can predict when they recall specific memories from the episode. 1/6

1 16 44

Reposted by James Antony

Eitan Schechtman @eitans.bsky.social · Aug 29

For >5 years, the International Sleep Replay Workshops (ISRW) have brought together scientists studying sleep & memory. The next ISRW will be on March 6th in Vancouver (before @cogneuronews.bsky.social). Follow the link for details and to join the mailing list.
isrw.bio.uci.edu

Pls repost! #sleep

12 20

Reposted by James Antony

Alicia Izquierdo @aliciaizquierdo.bsky.social · Aug 1

Suspension of all grants to UCLA www.latimes.com/california/s...

Trump freezes $200 million in UCLA science and medical research funding, citing antisemitism

The Trump administration has frozen roughly $200 million in National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and other federal agency-funded research at UCLA, citing allegations the school d...

www.latimes.com

22 110 160

Reposted by James Antony

Existential Comics @existentialcomics.com · Apr 30

What's cool about looking back at the history of college protests is that 19 year old students have been right about every single American war, and the esteemed Harvard educated opinion writers at the New York Times have been wrong about every single American war.

37 2.1K 5.9K

Reposted by James Antony

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

3 51 110

Reposted by James Antony

Anna Schapiro @annaschapiro.bsky.social · Jul 24

"this deal is unlikely to end the attacks. The federal government, and this administration, is simply too powerful and too arbitrary to be credibly bargained with."

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/o...

Opinion | Columbia’s Administrators Are Fooling Themselves

www.nytimes.com

6 29 92

Reposted by James Antony

Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · Jul 23

The assault on higher education is not just about coastal elite schools. "Federal agencies terminated or were attempting to terminate more than 4,000 grants across over 600 institutions. These grants are worth between $6.9 billion and $8.2 billion combined." www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

Feds Axed Grants Across Red, Blue States, Report Finds

The Center for American Progress says the Trump administration has targeted for termination more than 4,000 grants across over 600 institutions. Adjusting for statewide enrollment, South Dakota is hit...

www.insidehighered.com

2 35 80

Reposted by James Antony

Dr. David Miller 🏳️‍🌈 @davidimiller.bsky.social · Jul 10

🧪 BREAKING (good news): Senate subcommittee says NO! to Trump's proposed slashes to NASA & NSF funding.

Today, the subcommittee said to keep NASA + NSF funding at $33.9 billion, the same as in FY24.

See 7:15 below. Full Senate appropriations committee meets tomorrow about it.

🧵 1/3

Subcommittee Markup of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act | United States Senate Committee on Appropriations

United States Senate Committee on Appropriations

www.appropriations.senate.gov

18 370 1K

Reposted by James Antony

Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · Jul 9

🚨This is the most exciting step of my scientific career🚨

25 yrs ago I started a life long interest in navigation, maps & brains

I've collected data from >4 m people in 195 nations in SeaHeroQuest

In 3 weeks we set off on an ocean voyage to study the amazing spatial skills of Marshallese sailors:

Leverhulme Trust @leverhulme.ac.uk · Jul 9

‪World-leading scientists will set out on a unique research voyage, joining Indigenous Pacific sailors to investigate the centuries-old skill of wave piloting: www.stir.ac.uk/news/2025/ju...

Photo credit: www.instagram.com/chewy_lin/

Four people sail a traditional outrigger canoe near a tropical island under a sunny sky.

23 43 330

Reposted by James Antony

Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · Jul 6

Summary Table of the massive defunding of biomedical research in the United States
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

60 1K 1.6K

Reposted by James Antony

Tatiana Engel @engeltatiana.bsky.social · Feb 12

Our new paper with @chrismlangdon is just out in @natureneuro.bsky.social! We show that high-dimensional RNNs use low-dimensional circuit mechanisms for cognitive tasks and identify a latent inhibitory mechanism for context-dependent decisions in PFC data.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

24 71

Reposted by James Antony

Qasim Rashid, Esq. @qasimrashid.com · Jun 11

Terry Moran worked at ABC for 28 years. Now, for calling Stephen Miller “hateful,” (which he 💯 is per his own family), ABC fired him to appease an authoritarian hypocrite who ran on “free speech.” This will have a chilling effect on all journalists. Fourth Estate fails. Authoritarianism advances.

220 1.6K 5.6K

Reposted by James Antony

Matti has a Boo-ty 👻 @mrbtx.bsky.social · Jun 10

ngl this map of scheduled protests for this weekend is *wild*

map of the united states black with dots of protests in places both big and small

180 2.2K 8.4K

Reposted by James Antony

Jess Craven ❌👑 @jesscraven101.bsky.social · Jun 9

I am in downtown Los Angeles right now and it is completely surreal to hear that Trump is sending Marines here. We are listening to mariachi music. People have dogs. There are teenagers here. It is utterly and completely peaceful. Please tell your friends.

210 5.6K 13K

Reposted by James Antony

Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · May 31

How bad will it be? Catastrophic.

Proposed cuts to #NSF, #NIH, and #NASA will set the US R&D landscape back 25 yrs+, cause economic and job loss now, and undermine innovations to come.

But, this is the WH's *proposed* budget.

Speak up now before it is too late.

(inflation adjusted $-s below)

NSF, NASA and NIH budgets per year, inflation adjusted from 2000-2025 along with the proposed cuts. NSF includes research component only. Massive cuts across all sectors, well below support spanning 25 years.

71 1.4K 2.6K

Reposted by James Antony

Paul Frankland @franklandlab.bsky.social · May 14

Sharing a new paper from the lab. This paper, led by Sangyoon Ko, represents a merging of two longstanding research themes in the lab-- adult neurogenesis and systems consolidation.

rdcu.be/el18q

A short thread follows for those interested.

1/n

Systems consolidation reorganizes hippocampal engram circuitry

Nature - A study shows that loss of memory precision associated with systems consolidation can be explained by neurogenesis-dependent reorganization of engram circuitry within the hippocampus over...

rdcu.be

15 97 220

Reposted by James Antony

Rebekah Tromble @rebekahtromble.bsky.social · May 13

The worst happened. We were DOGE’d. Our NSF funding is gone.

So now there’s nothing stopping me from sharing Expert Voices Together, a crisis response system for US-based researchers and journalists facing harassment.

It's a true passion project. 🧵 1/

expertvoicestogether.org

22 780 1.7K

Reposted by James Antony

Emily G. Jacobs @emilyjacobs.bsky.social · May 12

Join us in beautiful Santa Barbara! We're hiring a full-time junior specialist/research technician to play a central role in data collection & analysis of brain imaging studies of pregnancy & menopause.

Learn more & apply at: recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/JPF02974

Or help us spread the word 💫

3 43 50

Reposted by James Antony

Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social · May 11

It's 2015. President Barack Obama has accepted a "sky palace" jumbo jet from the Qatari government, which he'll own after he leaves office. "Everybody relax," he says in an interview with the New York Times. Everyone does. The networks then televise the military parade in his honor on his birthday.

930 8.7K 42K

Reposted by James Antony

Joyce White Vance @joycewhitevance.bsky.social · May 9

“NSF watchers fear that a smaller, restructured agency could be more vulnerable to pressure from the White House to fund research that suits its ideological bent.” www.science.org/content/arti...

Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

Changes seen as a response to presidential directives on what research to fund

www.science.org

46 440 1.2K