Melissa Franch, PhD

STEM Tea | Founding Black in Neuro Brielle Ferguson and Angeline Dukes discuss Black in Neuro, the power of visibility in representation and critical lessons about mentorship.

Surviving isn’t enough; underrepresented groups in academia need to thrive.

In this STEM Tea episode, @phdgprotein86.bsky.social is joined by @brielleryan.bsky.social and @heydrdukes.bsky.social.
Learn why visibility is sometimes the most important step >>> www.biotechniques.com/podcasts/ste... 🧪

New preprint!

"Non-commitment in mental imagery is distinct from perceptual inattention, and supports hierarchical scene construction"

(by Li, Hammond, & me)

link: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

-- the title's a bit of a mouthful, but the nice thing is that it's a pretty decent summary

Really interesting work by Bakhurin and colleagues challenging the reward prediction error hypothesis of dopamine:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
I love this figure which both echoes and undermines the famous figure from Schultz et al. (1997).

Connecting neural activity, perception in the visual system Figuring out how the brain uses information from visual neurons may require new tools. I asked nine experts to weigh in.

Figuring out how the brain uses information from visual neurons may require new tools, writes @neurograce.bsky.social. Hear from 10 experts in the field.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...

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...

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. 🧵

I’m super excited to finally put my recent work with @behrenstimb.bsky.social on bioRxiv, where we develop a new mechanistic theory of how PFC structures adaptive behaviour using attractor dynamics in space and time!

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

Does predictive coding work in SPACE or in TIME? Most neuroscientists assume TIME, i.e. neurons predict their future sensory inputs. We show that in visual cortex predictive coding actually works across SPACE, just like the original Rao+Ballard theory #neuroscience
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Mirror manifolds: partially overlapping neural subspaces for speaking and listening Participants in conversations need to associate words their speakers but also retain those words general meanings. For example, someone talking about their hand is not referring to the other speakers ...

New manuscript from the lab!

"Mirror manifolds: partially overlapping neural subspaces for speaking and listening"

Led by superstar grad student Anilu Chavez (not on Bluesky)!

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

PIEZO channels link mechanical forces to uterine contractions in parturition Mechanical forces are extensively involved in pregnancy and parturition, but their precise roles and mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here, we identify mechanically activated ion channels PIEZO1 a...

New preprint alert! The uterus expands ~500-fold in pregnancy, yet we know little about how pressures are sensed. Led by @yunxiao-dr.bsky.social, we show PIEZOs are required for contractions and birth in mice, with dual roles of PIEZO1 in muscle and PIEZO2 in neurons
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🎉 "High-dimensional neuronal activity from low-dimensional latent dynamics: a solvable model" will be presented as an oral at #NeurIPS2025 🎉

Feeling very grateful that reviewers and chairs appreciated concise mathematical explanations, in this age of big models.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Multisensory coding of self-motion and its contribution to navigation - Nature Reviews Neuroscience As an animal moves within its environment, self-motion signals are generated by the inner ear vestibular organs and the retina and transmitted to the CNS. In this Review, Mao and Gu describe how these...

Multisensory coding of self-motion and its contribution to navigation — a Review by Dun Mao & Yong Gu

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#neuroscience #neuroskyence

Distributed and drifting signals for working memory load in human cortex Increasing working memory (WM) load incurs behavioral costs, and whether the neural constraints on behavioral costs are localized (i.e., emanating from the intraparietal sulcus) or distributed across ...

New pre-print day! Distributed and drifting signals for working memory load in human cortex 🧠 (with Ed Awh & @serences.bsky.social)

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

Increasing alignment of large language models with language processing in the human brain - Nature Computational Science Larger LLMs’ self-attention more accurately predicts readers’ regressive saccades and fMRI responses in language regions, whereas instruction tuning adds no benefit.

📢Out now! @jixingli.bsky.social, @lamb-cityuhk.bsky.social and colleagues assess whether instruction tuning can enhance LLM's ability to capture linguistic information in the human brain. www.nature.com/articles/s43... #compneuro #ArtificialIntelligence

A drawing of a woman standing at the tips of a person's outstretched hand as she prepares to ascend a ladder into the sky.

Career Advice | Equity-Minded Mentorship as Courageous Action

As formal DEI efforts come under intense pressures, Kimberly A. Griffin and W. Brad Johnson offer advice for how faculty can still advance equity in higher ed through mentorship. https://bit.ly/4pq8H6x

#EDUSky #AcademicSky #HigherEd

Happy to share that our work on semantic composition is out now -- open access -- in Cerebral Cortex!

With Marco Marelli (@ercbravenewword.bsky.social), @wwgraves.bsky.social & @carloreve.bsky.social.

doi.org/10.1093/cerc...

Spectacular talk by SNL Early Career Award winner Esti Blanco Elorrieta! Much NeLLab pride, congratulations Esti! 🎉🎉 #SNL2025 @snlmtg.bsky.social

Richard Antonello, Chandan Singh, Shailee Jain, Aliyah Hsu, Jianfeng Gao, Bin Yu, Alexander Huth
A generative framework to bridge data-driven models and scientific theories in language neuroscience
https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.00812

🚨 Excited to share the latest preprint form the lab ➡️https://tinyurl.com/32d3be9f

Here we tackle a long-standing chicken-or-egg 🐣🥚question in #autism and developmental neuroscience

➡️ Is excitation–inhibition (E:I) imbalance a "cause" or a "consequence" of #autism?

Check out what we found!
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Really looking forward to presenting my new research on semantic coding in single neurons in autism this Sunday at the Society for Neurobiology of Language conference! Be sure to check out all the presentations from the Hayden lab! @benhayden.bsky.social @snlmtg.bsky.social

Check out our latest speech work!

Compositionality of social gaze in the prefrontal-amygdala circuits Each social gaze can be deconstructed into primitive components, including gaze content, social state, and gaze duration. To reduce dimensionality and facilitate generalization, the brain needs to rep...

Super excited to share this new work from the lab (led by Guangyao Qi)! We demonstrate compositional social gaze codes in the prefrontal-amygdala circuits, by testing three predictions from the compositionality hypothesis. 👇👇

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

Causal Dynamics of Social Gaze in Primate Prefrontal-Amygdala Networks Revealed by Dynamic Bayesian Modeling Social gaze is a fundamental channel of primate communication, shaping dynamic interactions and fostering mutual understanding. While prior studies have mapped the behavioral correlates of social gaze...

Very excited to share a new collaborative work with @neuralnandy.bsky.social and Monika Jadi on using a novel ‘super-seasoning’ approach and dynamic Bayesian network modeling to reveal multi-area causal network dynamics underlying social interaction.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Diverse and flexible strategies enable successful cooperation in marmoset dyads Meisner and Shi et al. show that common marmosets flexibly coordinate with partners using both gaze-dependent and rhythmic strategies. Cooperation depends on active social monitoring and is shaped by ...

Super excited to share this new collaborative work - marmosets use diverse and highly flexible strategies when they cooperate. These strategies are powerfully determined by both social factors (sex, dominance, familiarity) & individual partner identity.

www.cell.com/current-biol...

🚨We believe this is a major step forward in how we study hippocampus function in healthy humans.

Using novel behavioral tasks, fMRI, RL & RNN modeling, and transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS), we demonstrate the causal role of hippocampus in relational structure learning.

Reflecting on my journey with @mfranch.bsky.social, from how I chose my mentors and topics (excitement!), what inspired me to write a book (befuddlement) & then shift to mood research (opportunity). Also: how I interpret my own emotions (lean in). Thanks for having me, @storiesofwin.bsky.social!

Book cover: The Nature of Emotion (Ekman, Davidson)

What's the difference between emotions & moods?

While old (1994), this book dives into it.

Richard Davidson suggests a functional difference, whereby emotions bias action and moods bias cognition. (Hmmm... the action/cognition distinction is a tricky one).

psycnet.apa.org/record/1995-...

Stories of WiN

Let’s talk @storiesofwin.bsky.social. I’m flattered to be among their profiles (coming soon) & I want to elevate the team behind this terrific effort. /1

www.storiesofwin.org

Mapping human thalamocortical connectivity with electrical stimulation and recording - Nature Neuroscience Intracranial stimulation maps human brain causal connectivity, uncovering distinct pathways. The authors show that thalamic pulses uniquely evoke delayed theta oscillations, offering new insights into...

When you stimulate cortex, what gets activated almost simultaneously (if not earlier) with other cortical sites?
Yes, 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗺𝘂𝘀
doi.org/10.1038/s415...

A neural manifold view of the brain - Nature Neuroscience Recent advances in neuroscience have revealed how neural population activity underlying behavior can be well described by topological objects called neural manifolds. Understanding how nature, nurture...

Great new review on neural manifolds by @juangallego.bsky.social and @mattperich.bsky.social.

Amazing read. Lots of intuition and examples. Great synthesis of why manifold structure pops up everywhere in neuroscience, from motor control to cognitive tasks.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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✨EXCITING NEWS!✨We're hosting our first ever, in-person event! Join us immediately before #SFN for a keynote, panel discussions, networking & more! Interested in attending? Fill out the form below:

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Nov 15 | 9am-1pm | Tata Hall at UCSD
Help us spread the word!