Paul Hill

EPFL-Smart-Kitchen-30: Densely annotated cooking dataset with 3D kinematics to challenge video and language models Understanding behavior requires datasets that capture humans while carrying out complex tasks. The kitchen is an excellent environment for assessing human motor and cognitive function, as many complex...

Understanding behavior requires datasets that capture humans while carrying out complex tasks. The kitchen is an excellent environment for assessing human motor and cognitive function, as many complex actions are naturally exhibited in kitchens from chopping to 🧽!

arxiv.org/abs/2506.01608

New paper alert! 🚨 We show that age-related neural dedifferentiation in scene-selective cortex is tied to changes in eye movements. Using simultaneous fMRI + eye-tracking, we found that younger adults’ fixations covary with scene specificity, but this link weakens with age.

Link in post below 👇

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🚨 New preprint! 🚨

Excited and proud (& a little nervous 😅) to share our latest work on the importance of #theta-timescale spiking during #locomotion in #learning. If you care about how organisms learn, buckle up. 🧵👇

📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
💻 code + data 🔗 below 🤩

#neuroskyence

Evidence gap in blood biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease Willem van Gool and colleagues argue that moves to use blood biomarkers in clinical practice or population screening are inappropriate without evidence on outcomes important to patients and carers T...

Out of 800+ studies on blood-based biomarkers for Alzheimer's, not a single one measured actual changes in patient outcomes.

doi.org/10.1136/bmj-...

The vascular contribution to cognitive decline in ageing and dementia - Nature Reviews Neuroscience Growing evidence suggests that reduced cerebral blood flow contributes to cognitive decline in ageing and dementia. Attwell and colleagues discuss the underlying mechanisms and functional consequences...

Delighted to share our latest review in Nature Reviews Neuroscience!
We examine the growing evidence that vascular dysfunction plays a key role in cognitive decline in ageing and dementia, and argue that preserving/restoring CBF should be central to future therapies.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨 New paper in Journal of Vision!
We show that scene affordances—what you can do in a space—shape how we perceive and categorize scenes. This shapes your similarity preferences, predicts your categorization false alarms, and even alters neural representations. 🧵👇
🔗 doi.org/10.1167/jov....
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JNeurosci’s Early career researcher (ECR) Advisory Board just opened a call for applications (due July 18 at 5pm ET). Join our team for a unique opportunity to serve the ECR community and advocate for ECR needs in scientific publishing: www.jneurosci.org/content/ecr-...
@sfnjournals.bsky.social

New Paper Alert! de Chastelaine et al found that young adults are able to employ 'retrieval gating' to allow mnemonic content to be aligned with a retrieval goal, but older adults failed to do this even when their memory was boosted to match young adults! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Representation of locomotive action affordances in human behavior, brains, and deep neural networks

www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10....

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Cortex Special Issue honoring Dr. Francesca Frassinetti: From Bodies to Spaces: a neurocognitive/neuropsychological perspective on body-space interactions

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By integrating physical mobility and sensorimotor function into models of spatial navigation, we hope to broaden the scope of how navigation is studied, assessed, and ultimately used to detect preclinical changes in Alzheimer’s disease.

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We propose that spatial navigation offers a useful lens into early cognitive-motor changes in aging, shaped by neuromodulatory and multisensory processes that may decline before overt brain pathology.

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Rather than focusing solely on hippocampal or entorhinal dysfunction, we highlight how degraded sensorimotor inputs - like balance, gait, and vestibular function - play a crucial but often overlooked role.

In a recent review, @adekstreme.bsky.social and I revisit how spatial navigation breaks down in aging and early Alzheimer’s disease - and why it’s not just about the brain.

doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

#SpatialNavigation #AgingBrain #EmbodiedCognition #AlzheimerResearch

Senior Research Associate (RA2312) in University of East Anglia | UEA View details and apply for this Senior Research Associate (RA2312) vacancy in University of East Anglia. School of Psychology Faculty of Social Sciences Senior Research Associate Ref: RA...

Please share; My lab at @psychologyuea.bsky.social @uniofeastanglia.bsky.social is recruiting a post-doc for a cognitive neuroscience memory project. It is a 3-year post, with a proposed start date of 8th September. Application deadline is 15th of June.

vacancies.uea.ac.uk/vacancies/15...

It is important now more than ever for scientists to share their work with the general public. I am pleased to have contributed to investNScience’s campaign which they are currently running across numerous social media platforms. It is a great initiative that makes science more relevant to everyone.

Are you attending #CNS2025 ? If so, then you should stop by my poster on Tuesday morning for a fun chat about fmri and spatial memory!!

On the origin of memory neurons in the human hippocampus The hippocampus is essential for episodic memory, yet its coding mechanism remains debated. In humans, two main theories have been proposed: one suggests that concept neurons represent specific elemen...

www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

First post and first paper of the year! We show that semantic memory space becomes denser with age. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... .

The relationship between neural differentiation and exploratory eye movements in healthy young and older adults https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.30.635806v1

Instead of listing my publications, as the year draws to an end, I want to shine the spotlight on the commonplace assumption that productivity must always increase. Good research is disruptive and thinking time is central to high quality scholarship and necessary for disruptive research.

Would like to be added if there is still room, thanks

Would love to be added. I use VR and wearable sensors to study memory and navigation in aging and Alzheimer's disease

In a new preprint, we show that age differences in navigation strategies are complex & not well explained by the traditional allocentric-egocentric dichotomy. One unexpected finding - young adults shifted towards more 'egocentric' strategies when navigating in immersive and ambulatory VR environment

Look forward to reading this. This is something I have been thinking about in terms of age differences in navigation. Are older adults (on average) impaired at using a cognitive map to navigate, or do they simply prefer to exploit familiar and more certain routes?

🚨New paper alert!🚨 -- Registered report style!

A "blue-print"!

Some people seem born to explore: breaking new ground, traveling to new places.

Others seem perfectly content to enjoy familiar comforts.

This explore/exploit tradeoff is well-known, and varies across people and situations

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"Rethinking category-selectivity in human visual cortex" with @susanwardle.bsky.social Maryam Vaziri-Pashkam, Dwight Kravitz @cibaker.bsky.social 1/3

Age related health decline a predictor of future dementia risk An international study led by a UQ researcher has found frailty increases a person’s risk of dementia, but early intervention may be the key to prevention.

An international study led by a University of Queensland researcher has found #frailty increases a person’s risk of #dementia, but early intervention may be the key to prevention. (JAMA paper at jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...) www.uq.edu.au/news/article...

#Alzheimers #publichealth #geriatrics

In a recent preprint, we reviewed the many parallels between gait abnormalities and impaired spatial navigation in older age and Alzheimer's disease. Navigation may offer an ecologically valid cognitive-motor phenotype of age-related cognitive dysfunction. Feedback welcome!

osf.io/preprints/os...

Evaluating Models of the Ageing BOLD Response Linear and nonlinear methods for estimating the BOLD response in the sensorimotor task from a large dataset show important effects of adult age on response features and biophysical parameters, some o....

Our paper finally appeared on modelling the effect of age on the BOLD fMRI response, one implication of which is that many age effects previously reported may be vascular rather than neural… onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....