Michael C. Anderson

Review paper arguing that the #brain has a built-in mental brake that stops unwanted thoughts. Via a fronto-temporal pathway, it relies on GABA to calm mental loops. Weak brakes may underlie #PTSD, #OCD, anxiety, and #depression www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I've been waiting for this paper to drop for some time! I'm super glad to see it finally appear! Congratulations Mick! Looking forward to the final version.

Blimey!

Does prediction error drive one-shot declarative learning? The role of prediction error (PE) in driving learning is well-established in fields such as classical and instrumental conditioning, reward learning a…

sounds cool! I wonder, though, what to make of this in relation to the idea that prediction error enhances memory? E.g., www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

thanks...i can see it now. But still can't save a pdf on my machine....it's restricted.

Sadly, I am blocked by a Paywall...I guess the University of Cambridge doesn't get this journal? Any other way I can get it?

Thanks for sending this!

This sounds interesting. I look forward to seeing your paper. Do you have any papers on the grid world approach you are taking (sorry if I should know about this). Demonstrating the consequences of intrusive thinking computationally is important and useful, and I know of no other similar work.

Improving mental health by training the suppression of unwanted thoughts Training people to suppress fearful thoughts improved mental health, especially for those with anxiety and post-traumatic stress.

You raise a fair point which the data cannot address. Overall perf. levels on recall were similar across groups, but episodic memory ability need not equate to cognitive control ability. Causal manipulations of control training needed. Only thing that comes close is www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Incidentally, college students with a greater childhood history of traumatic experiences show greater suppression-induced forgetting than those who have no such history, according to Justin Hulbert & Mike Anderson (see our JEP G paper from 2018 or so).

Can you explain what you mean by "did better"? And regarding the latter point, do you mean that replaying negative events essentially provides an opportunity to learn control behaviours? (not quite sure what you meant).

Brain mechanisms underlying the inhibitory control of thought - Nature Reviews Neuroscience The capacity to prevent unwanted thoughts is important for cognitive function and mental health. Anderson et al. describe insights into the neural mechanisms of the inhibitory control of thought that ...

If intrusive thoughts warp cognitive maps in PTSD, does inhibitory control "unwarp them" or at least prevent warping? It would be interesting to see what the impact of control would be. BTW...apropros inhibitory control and intrusive thoughts, see our recent paper. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Amazing #RegisteredReport led by Sumaiyah Raza from @mrccbu.bsky.social.

We (again) found evidence against a memory benefit of spatial novelty. However, this time we did find a retroactive benefit of rest, which highlights that more work is needed here.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

To my complete surprise, our Nature Reviews Neuroscience review on the Brain Mechanisms Underlying the Inhibitory Control of Thought has landed on the cover! Cover art below! For an "explainer thread", see earlier tweet. bsky.app/profile/memo...
@mrccbu.bsky.social
#neuroskyence #memory #ptsd

The history and future of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging - Nature This Review provides an overview of the history of resting-state functional MRI research, which has helped to reveal the spatiotemporal organization of the brain, and discusses how it can contribute f...

When I first started working with resting state fMRI as a postdoc, there was a lot of skepticism about what we could learn from it. 20 years later, it's hard to imagine where the field of neuroscience would be without it. Here's a summary 🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This looks shockingly useful. Thanks, on behalf of the field!!

X’s dominance ‘over’ as Bluesky becomes new hub for research Data indicates more scholars turning to alternative social media site to post about their work after Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover

I'm not sure BlueSky is declining...perhaps I missed the discussion that led up to this. For example, this Times Higher Ed piece suggests it is doing well, as far as Science is concerned. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/xs-domi...

Brain mechanisms underlying the inhibitory control of thought - Nature Reviews Neuroscience The capacity to prevent unwanted thoughts is important for cognitive function and mental health. Anderson et al. describe insights into the neural mechanisms of the inhibitory control of thought that ...

Brain mechanisms underlying the inhibitory control of thought — a Review by Michael C. Anderson, Maite Crespo-Garcia & S. Subbulakshmi

@memorycontrol.bsky.social‬

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

#neuroscience #neuroskyence

We hope that our integrative review of retrieval stopping will lay the groundwork for further advances in addressing the distress of intrusive thinking.

The participants produced an important volume on this subject that lays out the mission of addressing intrusive thoughts and its importance, from diverse perspetives.
esforum.de/publications...

Addressing intrusive thinking is a vital mission in clinical neuroscience and psychiatry. Several years ago, 40 scientists from around the world gathered in an Ernst Strugman forum on Intrusive thinking, organised by Peter Kalivas and
‪@mpwpaulus.bsky.social‬ and facilitated by Julia Lupp.

Research on inhibitory control over memory provides a rich neurocognitive framework through which to understand disordered thought control.More broadly, it complements response inhibition as a tool for understanding the control of action and thought.

Fundamentally, if neuroscience is going to inform how unwanted thoughts are controlled by the brain and address central features of psychiatric disorders, a theoretically valid construct and set of tools for measuring that construct are needed.

We also discuss the idea that affective stopping engages the same domain general prefrontal components as retrieval stopping, providing an account of fear extinction's benefits. @stevemaren.bsky.social en.bsky.social‬ �� joeydunsmoor.bsky.sococial @thephelpslab.bsky.social

These benefits of thought suppression contradict clinical wisdom about the inadvisability of thought suppression. Yet, they are consistent with the (also popular) notion that inhibitory control is fundamental to coping with perseverative thoughts and with resilience broadly. lir-mainz.de/en/home

Improving mental health by training the suppression of unwanted thoughts Training people to suppress fearful thoughts improved mental health, especially for those with anxiety and post-traumatic stress.

Critically, we review evidence that retrieval stopping of unwanted thoughts plays an important role in attenuating affective responding to suppressed content, and also that training people to suppress fearful thoughts improves their mental health. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Variations in response to trauma and hippocampal subfield changes Models of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suggest that the hippocampus is key to the persistence of traumatic memory. Yet very little is known ab…

In another example, hippocampal subfield CA1 volume predicts prefrontal suppression of hippocampal activity during intrusions in a retrieval stopping task, and CA1 volume reduction also predicts intrusive symptoms in people with PTSD. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Hippocampal GABA enables inhibitory control over unwanted thoughts - Nature Communications It is not fully understood how intrusive or unwanted memories are regulated. Here the authors show that hippocampal GABA concentrations, and coupling between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and hip...

For example, successful thought stopping is strongly influeced by concentrations of GABA in the hippocampus, that enable hippocampal down-regulation to occur, when people suppress retrieval. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

To capture this fundamental difference, we introduce the concept of a FRONTO-TEMPORAL INHIBITORY CONTROL PATHWAY to capture what is distinct about mental control. This pathway has unique parameters that dictate thought stopping success that are not captured by response inhibition.

Our article integrates 25 years worth of research on the cognitive and brain mechanisms underlying retrieval stoppping. Retrieval stopping shares prefrontal and striatal components with action stopping, but instead modulates hippocampal and cortical regions that represent thoughts.