Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Mariam Aly

Dr Jen Ryan @drjenryan.bsky.social · 7h

Memory problems will change how you see the world...literally 👀

Across two new papers, we examined the eye movement patterns of younger adults, older adults, individuals with mild cognitive impairment, and amnesic cases.

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 19h

That would be *amazing*! I'm up for anything that will challenge the MTL memory systems view 😁 Bonus if it includes acetylcholine!

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 20h

Today I was scheduled to speak in a webinar at 8am but my 7:25am bus didn’t show up. I had to take a Lyft to work and arrived 9 min before speaking time. It was completely fine. I didn’t even panic. Is this what it feels like to be mid-career? 🤔

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 20h

116 days and counting! 😵‍💫

Maybe we should include this in our preprint citations? like, Aly & Baxter (200 days in review).

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 5d

Awesome news! Congrats! Let me know if you're ever in the Bay Area and want to drop by for a visit 😎

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Reposted by Mariam Aly

Sam Nastase @samnastase.bsky.social · 6d

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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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 6d

Thanks so much! Our focus is early career researchers (undergrad/grad student primarily, because the content is introductory). We give examples from the psych/neuro field. Anyone who thinks this will be of interest to them is welcome to join!

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 6d

This workshop will be run by me and @mattgoldrick.bsky.social! If you are interested but can't make the workshop, consider signing up for an office hours appointment to ask us your peer review questions!

www.reviewerzero.net/about/format...

Formative And Interactive Review (FAIR)

🌱 Formative And Interactive Review (FAIR) 🌱 Reviewer Zero's Formative and Interactive Review (FAIR) draft feedback program is designed for early career researchers (ECRs) to receive feedback on a draf...

www.reviewerzero.net

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 6d

Are you an early career scholar interested in learning more about peer review?

Join us for our virtual @reviewerzero.bsky.social workshop! We will help you understand how peer review works and give advice on responding to reviewer comments.

9-10:30am PT / 12-1:30pm ET on October 30th. Register👇🏼

Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Peer Review 101. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

northwestern.zoom.us

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Reposted by Mariam Aly

Reviewer Zero @reviewerzero.bsky.social · 6d

🚨 We are seeking a Digital Presence Coordinator!

Open to psych/neuro grad students, postdocs & faculty who are passionate about improving fairness in peer review.

Job details:

💻 Managing website, socials, newsletters

🕒 4–8 hrs/month | 💵 $500 honorarium | 📅 1-year term

Apply 👉 go.iu.edu/8vxh

go.iu.edu

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Reposted by Mariam Aly

Jorge Morales @jorge-morales.bsky.social · 7d

Imagine an apple 🍎. Is your mental image more like a picture or more like a thought? In a new preprint led by Morgan McCarty—our lab's wonderful RA—we develop a new approach to this old cognitive science question and find that LLMs excel at tasks thought to be solvable only via visual imagery. 🧵

Artificial Phantasia: Evidence for Propositional Reasoning-Based Mental Imagery in Large Language Models

This study offers a novel approach for benchmarking complex cognitive behavior in artificial systems. Almost universally, Large Language Models (LLMs) perform best on tasks which may be included in th...

arxiv.org

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Reposted by Mariam Aly

Karen Campbell 🇨🇦 @karampbell.bsky.social · 8d

The brain represents the world around us as a series of neural states - stable patterns of activity that change as we move from one event to the next.

New paper by @selmalugtmeijer.bsky.social showing that neural states get longer as people age. #PsychSciSky

nature.com/articles/s42003-025-08792-4

Temporal dedifferentiation of neural states with age during naturalistic viewing - Communications Biology

Movie fMRI data reveals age-related lengthening of neural states in visual and prefrontal regions, reflecting reduced temporal differentiation while preserved alignment with perceived events suggests stable coarse event segmentation.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Mariam Aly

Daniel Bolnick @danielbolnick.bsky.social · 12d

The GRFP announcement from NSF cuts out an entire cohort of 2nd year students from consideration, without warning. This is so deeply unfair that it warrants a formal protest from the scientific community. If someone wants to work with me to craft an open letter and solicit signatures, LMK.

Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 12d

New: After a long wait, the GRFP solicitation is live! Deadlines have been extended to early November, so applicants have a bit over a month to submit. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

www.nsf.gov

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 12d

It's awfully slow but it works for me. You could try right clicking and copying the link address if the direct bluesky link doesn't' work. Both approaches work for me but it takes a long time for the page to load 🤷🏽‍♀️

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Reposted by Mariam Aly

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 13d

A method for capturing neuronal activity using fMRI excited the neuroimaging field but couldn’t be replicated. Today, the authors of the original paper retracted their work.

By @callimcflurry.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/retraction/a...

Authors retract Science paper on controversial fMRI method

Several MRI artifacts contribute to the neuronal activity signal picked up by the method, according to a preprint the authors posted this month.

www.thetransmitter.org

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 13d

This looks like a fantastic, comprehensive, and scholarly review paper led by Hannah Tarder-Stoll (who is on fire!), with a wonderful group of colleagues – Melanie Sekeres, Brian Levine, and Morris Moscovitch.

What an all-star team! ⭐

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 13d

A memory can be represented at different levels of granularity, from highly specific to generalized.

Different representational formats of a memory can be used at different times or in different contexts, and draw on different neural representations.

doi.org/10.31234/osf...

OSF

doi.org

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Reposted by Mariam Aly

Blake Emerson @blakeprof.bsky.social · 13d

UCLA’s funds reinstated after yesterday’s court order! Thanks to the brave researchers and their amazing counsel, including Dean Chemerinsky, who brought suit. This is just another turn in the ongoing fight, but a great result for now.

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 14d

They are lucky to have you! I'm so excited to see all the amazing work you will continue to do, and the new collaborations that will emerge 🎉

Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 15d

Some people are unable to consciously picture images in their mind's eye – they have aphantasia. What have scientists learned about aphantasia over the past 10 years?

This paper reviews subtypes of aphantasia, its potential functions, and ongoing debates.

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

A decade of aphantasia research – and still going!

Aphantasia, a term coined in 2015, refers to the lack of wakeful visual imagery. Research since then has clarified the nature of this intriguing varia…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Reposted by Mariam Aly

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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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 15d

So glad this stimulus set may be helpful for you! 😊

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Reposted by Mariam Aly

Jaweed Kaleem @jaweedkaleem.bsky.social · 15d

BREAKING: A federal judge has ordered Trump to restore $500 million in frozen UCLA NIH grants. The same judge, Rita F. Lin, previously ordered all UCLA NSF grants reinstated. Lin has now nearly entirely reversed Trump's July de-funding of UCLA research: www.latimes.com/california/s...

Federal judge orders Trump to restore $500 million in frozen UCLA medical research grants

A San Francisco-based federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to restore all National Institutes of Health grants to UCLA, roughly $500 million, that the government suspended in July.

www.latimes.com

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 16d

Thanks so much! We're excited to use these stimuli in upcoming fMRI experiments – and can't wait to see what kinds of studies they might contribute to in the broader community!

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 16d

This stimulus set is thanks to the hard work of our amazingly creative grad student, Zall Hirschstein, who had to do some magic to get this all to work.

It's part of an ongoing, fun collaboration with @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social.

Check out the preprint and stimulus set 👇🏼

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OSF

osf.io

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