Hugo Spiers

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).

An impressive null result in @pnas.org the search goes on...

New paper - Sex differences in healthy brain aging are unlikely to explain higher Alzheimer’s Disease prevalence in women: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2510486122

A parietal grid-like code rotates with cognitive maps but lags rapid behavioral transfer The neural grid code has been proposed to provide a mechanism for generalization and transfer of relational knowledge between situations enabling rapid adaptation of behavior in novel circumstances. H...

A parietal grid-like code rotates with cognitive maps but lags rapid behavioral transfer
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Looking forward to having you in our dept!

📣 BIG NEWS EVERYONE. I am so excited to announce…

🎉 I’m moving to University College London @ucl.ac.uk to join the Experimental Psychology department in @uclpals.bsky.social! 🎉

The big move happens in spring/summer. So I’m already exploring recruiting staff & students at UCL for fall 2026!

Foraging in conceptual spaces: hippocampal oscillatory dynamics underlying searching for concepts in memory How does the brain access stored knowledge? It has been proposed that conceptual search engages neurocognitive processes similar to foraging in physical space. We tested this idea using intracranial E...

Foraging in conceptual spaces: hippocampal oscillatory dynamics underlying searching for concepts in memory

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

love this!

Traveling Through Space and Time With our Memories A person wearing headphones and a red hoodie walks through an airport with a suitcase, gazing at a boarding gate sign marked C7 with a French flag. Thought bubbles depict the Eiffel Tower and a map of...

PhD student Nina Curko and I wrote a short article about the superpowers of memory! Now published in Frontiers for Young Minds: kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10....

@dickretired.bsky.social might be able to email you a copy!

Space, Affect, Memory Space, Affect, Memory highlights the centrality of space in modern and contemporary culture, both as an object of study and as a concept that underpins research and creative practice. In so doing, thi...

Fernando Cabo Aseguinolaza and Tomás Espino Barrera, eds. Space, Affect, Memory: Literary geographies in transnational and transdisciplinary comparison - @uclpress.bsky.social, October 2025 (print and open access)
uclpress.co.uk/book/space-a...

1st Sharp Lab preprint! 🚨 We tested how anxiety affects task generalization—not how people generalize threat stimuli, but how they reuse action-outcome structures when planning in new contexts.

Worry makes people avoid reusing actions that co-occurred w/ threat!
📄: osf.io/preprints/ps...

🧵 1/12

email the authors. They are mainly going to be keen to share.

🚨 Our latest preprint:

A new tool to provide assessments of experience of the built environment: the NDIX.

This has been now deployed in 4 studies, being written up.

Here is the methods preprint with a starcast of co-authors:

This looks fascinating:

I think people are starting to wake up to the idea that de-skilling really could be bad. Interesting times.

This new residential tower in Lyon is made from wood.

In many ways, this is quite an incredible building. Here's why:

Galaxy rise narrated by Carl Sagan.

nicely put! I can see a growing backlash emerging.

a man in a suit is holding a jacket and a cigarette . ALT: a man in a suit is holding a jacket and a cigarette .

Interesting how companies and the financial world is racing to spend mindboggling amounts of money to build the infrastructure to train computers. But we are leaving the infrastructure to train and educate humans crumbling. The question is who will train who?

YouTube video by Simons Foundation Nicole Rust - The representation of mood in the primate insula (May 6, 2025)

Please spread the word! I am recruiting a PhD student this cycle (Fall 2026 start) to join my team in a new venture: the neuroscience of mood.

If you are curious to learn more, this short talk provides a good overview of why, what and how.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjIK...

I am excited to be connected via colleagues in the @thebartlettucl.bsky.social to this amazing project. Curious to see how this evolves.

Dense longitudinal neuroimaging reveals individual brain change trajectories Longitudinal measurements of brain structure and function are critical for understanding how humans change over time. Traditional longitudinal approaches sample sparsely across large windows of time t...

Dense longitudinal neuroimaging reveals individual brain change trajectories: Trends in Cognitive Sciences www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

This is an interesting read:

Its been an honour to have been @emre-yavuz-21.bsky.social's PhD supervisor for he last 3 years.

His hard work as created 3 published articles on Sea Hero Quest, one review manuscript with revisions resubmitted & a final article on fNIRS and group hunting behaviour about to be submitted/preprinted

** We have up to TWO funded PhD positions available in our lab!! Apply below to find new ways to enhance memory👇 Pls retweet **

Deadline: 2nd December

1. Cross-species closed-loopTMR: tinyurl.com/bddu4tp6

2. TUS and TMR in humans:
tinyurl.com/jjws5ctj

Happy to chat to interested applicants.

⏳ Deadline approaching! Apply by 13 Oct for the Postdoc in Cognitive Neuroscience at MPI Leipzig.

YouTube video by Doha Debates Here’s Why Foreign Aid Is a Scam | Doha Debates

Every time I show this in class, I am reminded how good it is www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfno...

𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗻𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗺
Is consciousness tied to biological brains?
Neuro&Philo Salon present+discussion with @anilseth.bsky.social of his BBS target paper!
October 23, noon USA eastern
#neuroskyence
Register: umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
doi.org/10.1017/S014...

Jane Goodall obituary: pioneer primatologist who inspired generations of scientists She was a tireless advocate for conservation, the welfare of captive chimpanzees and the protection of habitats.

Obituary: Jane Goodall (1934-2025) Pioneer primatologist who inspired generations of scientists

go.nature.com/48aWjRU