Morgan Barense

US-CAN Doctoral Excellence Award Western University, in vibrant London, Ontario, delivers an academic and student experience second to none.

Graduate students who have an offer to study in the US but are reconsidering or have been denied entry or current grad students who want to leave, then consider coming to Western University in Canada. Our University just launched a US-CAN Doctoral Excellence Program : grad.uwo.ca/finances/wes...

Proud to share the first preprint of my PhD w/ @barense.bsky.social & Mursal Jahed:

“Putting the testing effect to the test in the wild: Retrieval enhances real-world memories and promotes their semantic integration while preserving episodic integrity”

See thread! 🧵 osf.io/preprints/ps...

Your work provides a very important perspective and I am really grateful for it. I’m sorry this happened to you.

Dog-sled going past the Le Château Montebello.

Main public room in Le Château Montebello decorated for Christmas. The building is the world's largest "log cabin".

Le Château Montebello is situated on the banks of the Ottawa river, separating Quebec and Ontario.

Group photo the school of 2018 at the Winter school on the Neuroscience of Consciousness

CIFAR invites applications for senior PhD and postdocs to participate in the Neuroscience of Consciousness Winter School, held in Montebello, Canada Dec 10-12, 2025. The Winter School is hosted by members of CIFAR’s Brain, Mind, and Consciousness program. Please repost.
cifar.ca/next-generat... 🧠🧪

Congratulations!! I cannot wait to see the cool stuff you do on your lab.

If you are in Toronto on Tuesday next week, please consider coming to see a FREE public lecture on memory, delivered by the amazing @sjo09.bsky.social and @barense.bsky.social . Tix at this link can-acn.org/meeting-2025... Please repost and hope to see you there!

An Open Letter to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Who Thinks My Daughter is a Tragedy Dear Mr. RFK Jr., (The “dear” is tradition. Don’t mistake it for affection.) You said autistic children are a burden. That they ruin families. That...

"Autism doesn’t erase potential. It reshapes it. Sometimes it’s quiet. Sometimes it’s nonlinear. Always, it’s human."

What am I supposed to say to this generation of young scientists? Undermining the future of American science is not a path to accountability — it’s a path to decline.

Gut wrenching essay about trainees by Daphna Shohamy (Director of Columbia's Zuckerman Neuroscience Institute).

"let’s be clear: It isn’t institutions that are being punished. It’s the researchers who are the future of science in this country ..." 💔

www.statnews.com/2025/05/07/u...

If these models are off b/c the motor system is abnormal, social behaviour will take the greatest hit. At any rate - let me do the studies and get back to you! We need more neuroimaging data in nonspeakers so we can understand the genesis of various profiles and tailor appropriate supports.

I don't think it's necessarily a stretch. It's well established that the motor system builds internal models of action that
that can serve as templates to predict and interpret the actions of others (who move in more complex and unpredictable ways than non-social stimuli).

I'd have to see that study, but they might not respond to social stimuli b/c they weren't getting the right (sensory) info needed to move their body appropriately (motor). Or maybe they had the info but couldn't mount the typical response. Or both. Or neither. Hard to disentangle without brain data.

It's hard to talk about motor without talking about sensory, given that they are right next to each other in the brain and the execution of any motor plan requires sensory info (this is why the term sensorimotor is so often used). But issues here will derail social behaviour, which will derail lang.

Reduced social orienting could *absolutely* result from an abnormal sensorimotor system. This behaviour requires that the one (1) process perceptual info about the other person and (2) move in response. Either could be derailed by mechanisms that have nothing to do with high-level social processes.

But if the primary underlying deficit is motor, one would also observe such coupling. Motor difficulties would prevent typical social behaviour and lead to an underestimation of receptive language. In some cases, this might be the simplest explanation (Occam's razor). That's our testable hypothesis.

I'll also say that given the modularity of brain function, it's entirely possible that there could be a vast disconnect between the ability to speak and the ability to understand. If one is profoundly apraxic, they would not be able to demonstrate understanding with any reliable form of behaviour.

I think the relationship between motor challenges and language challenges is very much up for debate, with a lot of work showing a tight coupling between the two. But we are absolutely looking at brain mechanisms of motor processing in this group - stay tuned.

I agree, diagnosing apraxia is notoriously hard for those who cannot speak and I hope that neuroimaging can help here. But motor deficits are key associated features supporting an autism diagnosis in the DSM-5, and so most autistic individuals have motor deficits in their diagnostic profile already.

Looking for a Master’s or PhD trainee interested in a f/t lab manager role.

Funding for this position is secured longterm. It is a great opportunity for someone interested in making sig contributions to #cogneuro #aging & #womensbrainhealth in 🇨🇦

Solid salary with full benefits!

#neurojobs

How Dreams, Novelty, and Emotions Can Shape Memories: Lessons from Smartphone Studies At CNS 2025, researchers will share smartphone-based studies about how a range of actions can build stronger, more detailed memories.

Want to learn more about smartphone-based studies on memory? Check out our #CNS2025 press release "How Dreams, Novelty, and Emotions Can Shape Memories: Lessons from Smartphone Studies," featuring the work of @evgoldfarb.bsky.social @barense.bsky.social @liladavachi.bsky.social:

And on Monday morning I'll be joining @evgoldfarb.bsky.social, @davidclewett.bsky.social and
@liladavachi.bsky.social in a symposium to talk about new techniques to study memory in the wild. Come say hi!

CNS 2025 presentations from the Barense lab

If you're at #CNS2025 come check out our lab's Sunday line-up of posters from @catalinayang.bsky.social, @bryanhong.bsky.social, @nellymatorina.bsky.social, and @laurenhomann.bsky.social.

One new experience a day boosts memory and mood: Study Researchers at the University of Toronto have found that doing just one new thing each day can significantly improve mood, memory and overall well-being.

"Small changes, like taking a different route during your daily walk, can have a significant impact on memory and mood," says @uoft.bsky.social Prof. @barense.bsky.social.

🧠 www.psych.utoronto.ca/news/one-new...

📣 Across the U.S., cuts to federal funding for health research are projected to cause losses of $16B and 68,500 jobs. How will YOUR area be impacted?

Excited to share SCIMaP, a website that our team has created to communicate the impact of funding cuts. #PsychSciSky #MedicalSky

scienceimpacts.org

Total recall: Detecting autobiographical memory retrieval in the absence of behaviour Functional neuroimaging has fundamentally changed our understanding of disorders of consciousness (DoC). While many DoC patients exhibit minimal to no…

In my ongoing quest to publish as many academic papers with Arnold Schwazenegger movies as part of the title, I give you…..Total Recall….out today and free to read www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Thank you! And we have learned a heck of a lot about naturalistic memory from your work with movies - not every question is suited to the messy wilds of real life!

Unique events improve episodic richness, enhance mood, and alter the perception of time during isolation - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Unique events improve episodic richness, enhance mood, and alter the perception of time during isolation

I very much enjoyed this fascinating real world memory paper-- congrats @barense.bsky.social and team!

Makes me rethink my use of the term "naturalistic memory" when I'm actually referring to (fictional) movies and narratives 😂!

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

My understanding is that the end goal of this resource is to track more than research and to capture all we have lost as a result of the GOP’s dismantling of the federal government. They’re relying on information from communities impacted, so please share widely theresearchwelost.com

#TAMeG2025 is coming (our 10th anniversary!) May 27 feat keynote @charan-neuro.bsky.social and panel on SciCom & Disinformation, with Carrie Boyce of RCIScience, @schalllab.bsky.social & @barense.bsky.social (chair)

Call for presentations is open for GTA and southern ON trainees 👉 tameg.ca!

Event Segmentation Applications in Large Language Model Enabled Automated Recall Assessments Understanding how individuals perceive and recall information in their natural environments is critical to understanding potential failures in perception (e.g., sensory loss) and memory (e.g., dementi...

New Preprint 🚨

This research with @bjherrmann.bsky.social, @alexbarnett.bsky.social, and @barense.bsky.social extends previous work exploring how LLMs can simulate human event segmentation, with applications for automated recall assessments.

arxiv.org/abs/2502.13349

Join us! Science Homecoming helps scientists reconnect with communities by writing about the importance of science funding in their hometown newspapers. We’ve mapped every small newspaper in the U.S. and provide resources to get you started. Help science get back home 🧪🔬🧬 🏠

sciencehomecoming.com