@hugospiers.bsky.social
Prof of Cognitive Neuroscience & Vice Dean at UCL, Fellow of the Royal Inst. of Navigation. I study how we remember, navigate & imagine space Photo: Our upcoming field research in the Marshall Islands https://spierslab.wixsite.com/wavesandwayfinding
Congrats what a cool study! Now just need to do something similar with our London taxi drivers...
The 6x US memory champion – Nelson Dellis – can memorize a deck of cards in 40 seconds and knows the first 10K digits of pi.
To figure out how, he let us peak inside his brain. Here is what we learned in our precision brain mapping study www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
youtube.com/shorts/MryMq...
I'll find out now if ArXiv is faster/reliable and report back. :)
📢 #Postdoc in #seabird #demography
Capture-recapture, IPMs and PVA. Analyses underway - great stage to join the project. Hybrid/remote possible. Apply: bit.ly/3P3yAM1
Please share widely, informal email enquiries welcome
@theseabirdgroup.bsky.social @worldseabirdunion.bsky.social
I've had to preprints via them, and in each case a long delay before they would appear on Google Scholar, and for one of them its been 6 months and the citations are still not picked up by Google Scholar. Its my main way of finding out what's published.
No probs with BioArXiv
Nice review by @rhens.bsky.social of the >300 papers using CamCAN data to study the cognitive neuroscience of aging rdcu.be/e73yS - thanks to the authors of all those papers!
The poster builds on the temporal community structure paradigm originally introduced by @annaschapiro.bsky.social
We adapted it to a 15-odour odour graph to ask whether mice learn the latent community structure, and how hippocampal activity reflects that organisation.
We have some cool data on hpc on graph structure in learned graph networks. Hoping to preprint soon.
What does it mean for culture to 'shape' cognition? pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41807136/ "Culture can (i) privilege some cognitive processes, while leaving alternative processes intact; (ii) prune unused alternative processes (iii) produce new cognitive processes; or (iv) have no effect"
Though Mondrian's works of the early 1900s originate with inspiration from nature, he's beginning to give way to his impulses of abstraction and expression, displaying atmospheric effects rather than the details of his subjects.
It's Cosyne time!!
Here are some contributions from my lab and some of my close collaborator labs (Thomas Akam, @melgaby.bsky.social, Steve Kennerley, @sameershethmd.bsky.social )
Thank you Lea! Thats really great to know. @emre-yavuz-21.bsky.social will be glad to get that feedback.
Such a fun to read and well written review; can really recommend for anyone new to or already proficient in spatial navigation research!
Paid, virtual TA Opportunities for July 2026 courses - Apply before 15 March!
Neuromatch Academy is hiring those with strong Python experience and at least an undergraduate degree to support its July online courses.
Learn more: neuromatch.io/become-a-tea...
Questions? Email nma@neuromatch.io
New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Md Mahfuzur Rahman, Vince Calhoun, and Sergey Plis:
Deep learning interpretability in neuroimaging: A comprehensive survey and methodological recommendations
doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...
I got the email. Thank you!
thats what I thought too! But I hit a snag in that it does seem to for some sections
thanks! neurons and cognition
Endorsement Code: B88FAF
I'm looking to submit to arXiv and I need someone to endorse me.
Its to submit a review. BioArxiv don't do these, and I'm not happy with the pick up on PsychArxiv, so I thought I'd try the main arXiv
Anyone registered with them that can help endorse me?
We only experience time moving forward. But memory can both predict what comes next and reconstruct what must have happened before.
In a new @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social preprint, we show how hippocampal development enables this flexible representation of time 🧵
Determinants of individual navigation ability
Review by Emre Yavuz & Hugo J. Spiers
go.nature.com/4sHHH3A
New review from our group out in Nature Reviews Psychology:
Determinants of individual navigation ability
with my excellent co-author: @emre-yavuz-21.bsky.social
My first-author review ‘Determinants of individual navigation ability’ is out in Nature Reviews Psychology, co-authored with the inspiring @hugospiers.bsky.social!!!! 🎉🧠
➡️ rdcu.be/e7KxG
#Neuroscience #Navigation @nature.com @natrevpsychol.nature.com @sfn.org @fens.org @ucl.ac.uk
Ha yes! I sketched out the key figures that went into it in PEARL
New review from our group out in Nature Reviews Psychology:
Determinants of individual navigation ability
with my excellent co-author: @emre-yavuz-21.bsky.social
Exercise enhances hippocampal-cortical ripple interactions in the human brain
neat analysis from iEEG data in patients:
academic.oup.com/braincomms/a...
Registration and abstract submission for our symposium Naturalistic Neuroscience – from perception to action and back (University of Bonn 28-29 May 2026) is no open!
www.nn2026.uni-bonn.de/en/registrat...
#NN2026 @unibonn.bsky.social
#naturalisticneuroscience #neuroscience #symposium #cfa
fMRI playing pac-man:
Structured Problem-Solving Recruits Language-Like
Hierachical Brain Network
www.researchgate.net/publication/...
Very sad news on the tragic death of an incredible scientist - Alan Wilson FRS.
Alan was working with to track the motion of our yacht on the pacific. We needed all the wave patterns out there on our trip. He had the solution.
He had tracked no range of amazing animals in his work, incl cheetahs
I was so sorry to read about Alans tragic death. My condolences to you and the team at the RVC. Alan remains a hero to me. His research was remarkable and he was such a wonderful person to talk to and share ideas with. RIP.