Melanie Tschiersch

Fresh out: a short review article where I give an overview of different ways that across-trial temporal structure is helpful in understanding cognitive models of decision-making

osf.io/preprints/ps...

For everyone voting in Germany this Sunday: Check out this thread to learn about the different political parties' positions on science communication

UPDATE: It's happening now. German police entered the new venue to break up our meeting with Francesca Albanese and Amnesty International. The miss no chance to prove that totalitarianism is back in Germany even before the AfD has won gvt

Merz stellt Wahlkampf über demokratische Werte Mit ihrem Verhalten im Bundestag hat die Union einen demokratischen Tabubruch begangen, meint Max Bauer.

Merz stellt Wahlkampf über demokratische Werte #Kommentar #AfD #CDU

This Cybertruck did not crash. It made a heartfelt and perhaps ill-advised gesture that, in the moment, might have been misinterpreted as a crash, but we should not rush to judgement.

Thank you so much, Seán! It's been a long time in the making but finally getting somewhere!

Thanks to the yield of U arrays, we were able for the 1st time AFAIK to average across neurons (not trials) and see memory bumps on single trials. Look at this 😍

Not the focus of the work but it taps into an open debate on the neural mech. of WM cf @cconstan.bsky.social @earlkmiller.bsky.social

🗯️Taken together, this shows that prefrontal hemispheres can adjust to varying task demands with a simple underlying architecture!

If you're interested in more details, check out the preprint or send me a message!

Also a HUGE shout-out to everyone involved.It's been (and will continue) fun!🎉 END/🧵

a man is making a funny face while holding his finger to his head . ALT: a man is making a funny face while holding his finger to his head .

Well... turns out REDUNDANT hemispheres can also replicate this effect!! So it seems that redundant, weakly connected hemispheres can provide increased precision (redundancy) when WM demands are low and increased capacity (weak connections) when WM demands are high. 7/🧵

When inputs were slightly lateralized, the model showed that each hemisphere stores the stronger contra- over a weaker ipsilateral input when WM capacity is reached. Remember from 2/ where I said the bilateral field advantage was seen as evidence for non-redundant, independent hemispheres?? 6/🧵

This got us thinking: This model can represent the same memory redundantly, but also maintains history drift privately, allowing for private and shared memories. What does this mean when multiple items need to be remembered?🤔 5/🧵

we modeled two redundant spiking bump attractor networks with inter-area connections and replicated the data if connections were tuned and weak. Furthermore, 🖥️model + 🐒data were in agreement that weak connections lead to private history attraction (serial dependence) in each hemisphere. 4/🧵

We first found that both hemispheres stored (bump-like FR in the figure) and guided behavior for the full visual field suggesting redundant hemispheres. Additionally, neural traces were only weakly correlated across hemispheres suggesting weak coordination between hemispheres... 3/🧵

How do prefrontal hemispheres support continuous spatial WM when visual inputs come strongly lateralized?🤔
Previous studies suggest:
1️⃣ Independent hemispheres:Larger capacity across hemifields (bilateral field advantage)?
2️⃣ Redundant hemispheres:Unilateral opto-disruption doesn’t impair behavior?2/🧵

🚨Excited to share my first @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social🚨 with the amazing Smith lab, @jbarbosa.org and Albert Compte who made this work possible.

We show that 🐒prefrontal hemispheres combine redundancy (for precision) & weak connections (for capacity) for supporting spatial working memory (WM). 1/🧵

Redundant, weakly connected prefrontal hemispheres balance precision and capacity in spatial working memory https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.15.633176v1

Thrilled to share my first co-last author paper 🥹

Lead by the amazing @mtschiersch.bsky.social 👸, we investigate how both 🐒PFC interact during working memory. Her work sheds light into WM mechanisms by reconciling previous contradictions.

Tune in for 🐒WM, serial dependence and attractor models

good luck! Tagesschau says they are sceptical it will even arrive at all... but fingers crossed!

German's living abroad, we've got until the 2nd of February to register for the elections but it might still be tight that our votes count in the end. Anyways... better safe than sorry, so register at your last Meldestelle:)

Excited to share that today our paper recommender platform www.scholar-inbox.com has reached 20k users! We hope to reach 100k by the end of the year.. Lots of new features are being worked on currently and rolled out soon.

About 5 weeks between now and German parliamentary elections. And I'm seeing the exact same dynamics here that recently murdered what was left of US democracy.

3 things to watch out for:

1/5

Check our latest in which we leverage shape metrics to compare neural geometry across regions, sessions or subjects and how their differences predict behavior.

w/ Nejatbakhsh, Duong, @sarah-harvey.bsky.social, Brincat, @siegellab.bsky.social, @earlkmiller.bsky.social & @itsneuronal.bsky.social

El 1% más rico devora "su parte" del planeta en solo 10 días Mientras la mayoría lucha por sobrevivir, los más privilegiados aceleran el colapso climático sin pagar las consecuencias.

🌍 El 1% más rico devora “su parte” del planeta en solo 10 días
https://spanishrevolution.net/el-1-mas-rico-devora-su-parte-del-planeta-en-solo-10-dias
Un análisis sobre cómo el 1% más rico contribuye al colapso climático sin asumir las consecuencias, mientras el resto lucha por sobrevivir.

Wow, just wow.
V different approach reveals numerous problems in Scientific Reports - cf deevybee.blogspot.com/2024/10/an-o...
I do hope @springernature.bsky.social will start to publish reviewer reports and editor info as we suggested

A reminder to the Germans living abroad: It's time to register to vote for the next elections. You just need to send this document to your last Meldestelle so they can send you the voting equipment when it's time:)

www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/mitteilungen...

A screenshot of a paper on bioarxiv illustrating the lack of blue sky share button!

Would you like to see @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social add a share to blue sky button?! I know I would! Share this post to let @richardsever.bsky.social @erictopol.bsky.social and others at bioarxiv know!

A scientist in a labcoat reading the IPCC report

"This will make it likely that the limit of 1.5C will be surpass in this century".

In Germany, scientists are publicly reading the @ipcc.bsky.social AR6 synthesis report at @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social . You can contact your local group to organize a reading.

Since no one did it, here is a list of people doing research on working memory. The list is admittedly biased (based on the people I follow), so please help: don't hesitate to let me know of someone missing. I will happily follow and add them to the list!

Please RT🙏

go.bsky.app/8ZsVgMo