David Halpern

Congrats Evan!!

I’m thrilled to announce that I will start as a presidential assistant professor in Neuroscience at the City U of Hong Kong in Jan 2026!
I have RA, PhD, and postdoc positions available! Come work with me on neural network models + experiments on human memory!
RT appreciated!
(1/5)

Congrats Tom!!

Thanks Omri!

Thanks Ethan!

And most importantly, all of the research assistants, neurosurgeons and epilepsy patients who contributed their time and effort to these massive datasets that make research like this possible.

Memory consolidation accelerates - Nature Neuroscience A new study challenges the classic view of memory consolidation as a delayed, offline process by showing that neural reactivation, which is crucial for memory consolidation, occurs rapidly during awak...

I’d like to thank @fuentemilla.bsky.social for writing an illuminating commentary that fits our little episode into the broader context of memory consolidation research www.nature.com/articles/s41... and our generous reviewers who greatly improved the paper with their insightful comments

In addition, they corroborate cognitive theories about the role of study-phase retrieval and covert rehearsal, linking behavioral memory phenomena to their neural substrates.

These findings align with recent suggestions (from e.g.
@wamsleylab.bsky.social,
@annaschapiro.bsky.social, @sleepandcognition.bsky.social , @tristanshuman.bsky.social,
@denisejcai.bsky.social
and others not on BlueSky) that consolidation occurs opportunistically throughout waking experience.

Our analyses revealed that spontaneous reinstatement of item-related neural activity during encoding intervals was a significant predictor of subsequent recall.

This suggests that consolidation-like mechanisms may occur continuously—not just during post-encoding rest.

By analyzing intracranial EEG recordings from two large datasets (N>200 in each study), we investigated the effects of reactivating item-related neural activity while studying other items on a list.

In contrast, cognitive theories of memory suggest that retrieval/rehearsal processes can strengthen prior memories even while encoding ongoing perceptual experience.

In the classic view of systems consolidation, the hippocampus strengthens previously encoded memories by spontaneously reactivating cortical activity during offline periods (such as sleep or rest) when the brain isn’t under continuous memory encoding demands.

Very excited to share that this paper from my time in the Kahana lab is finally out in @natureneuro.bsky.social! bsky.app/profile/natu...

Not to toot my own horn but if you include cog neuro as psychology, our paper might fit 3/4 of the requirements (DAGs in the appendix): www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...