Arianna Moccia

Human hippocampal theta–gamma coupling coordinates sequential planning during navigation

Impressive study from Dan Bush's Lab at UCL:

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

1/9 New paper with @gonzalezgarcia.bsky.social and @lindedomingo.bsky.social : “Characterising semantic prioritisation in visual working memory.”
Core question: when we hold visual info briefly in mind, what gets accessed first: perceptual details or semantic meaning?

📣New preprint out on False Memory
With coauthors: Safak Erener, Simon W Davis, Roberto Cabeza

When knowledge interferes with perception: Neural mechanisms of the semantic amplification of visual false memory

Preprint at: doi.org/10.64898/202...

@woodforbrains.bsky.social @synecphory.bsky.social

Job alert!!

We're looking for a Postdoc and two RAs on a 3-year project examining the effects of smartphones on sleep and mental health in adolescents. Details below:

RA: tinyurl.com/7h6zrz2k
Postdoc: tinyurl.com/ykmsk757

Please repost :)

Repeated Viewing of a Narrative Movie Changes Event Timescales in The Brain Many experiences occur repeatedly throughout our lives: we might watch the same movie more than once and listen to the same song on repeat. How does the brain modify its representations of events when...

How do the brain’s event representations change as we gain familiarity with an experience?

Brain regions’ representations can become coarser or finer as event familiarity increases. Fine-tuning predicts memory recall.

Excited to share this work with Narjes Al-Zahli & @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social!

Absolutely brilliant!!! I had no doubts whatsoever! 🥳 well done Dr Zhang! 🎉

Anyone else going to #MEGNord at Aarhus next week? 🇩🇰 Interested in predictive coding of touch from sound, beta & gamma dynamics, or somatosensory echoes? 🧠 Boy do I have the poster for you! Come say hi 😊

Disrupted Sleep: Mechanisms Linking Sleep Deprivation, Neurovascular Dysfunction, and Metabolic Pathways at Leeds Beckett University on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Disrupted Sleep: Mechanisms Linking Sleep Deprivation, Neurovascular Dysfunction, and Metabolic Pathways at Leeds Beckett University, listed on FindAPhD.com

Please repost! Fully funded four-year PhD studentship opportunity on sleep deprivation and neurovascular dysfunction on the BBSRC Yorkshire Bioscience Doctoral Training Partnership, including annual stipend, research costs and home tuition fees tinyurl.com/ms7v2pcx

New paper from our lab by Ricardo Morales-Torres (@rmt93.bsky.social) on the visual and semantic properties that shape the vividness of mental representations for events past.

psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

The short answer to the title, "What Makes Memories Vivid?" is ... meaning!

Rhythmic light stimulation elicits multiple concurrent neural responses that separably shape human perception Rhythmic light stimulation offers solutions to innumerable cognitive and neurological disorders. However, like any neuromodulatory technique, responses to rhythmic light stimulation are highly variabl...

Delighted to share our new preprint!

We show that rhythmic light stimulation produces multiplexed oscillatory responses at fundamental and harmonic frequencies that are spatially, temporally, and functionally distinct.

Read on for the details [1/6]

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#neuroskyence

A neural state space for episodic memories Episodic memories are highly dynamic and change in nonlinear ways over time. This dynamism is not captured by existing systems consolidation theories …

I wrote a thing on episodic memory and systems consolidation. I hope you all enjoy it and/or find it interesting.

A neural state space for episodic memories

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition 🧪

The podcast is now available on Spotify!

You can still take part in our survey here: cambridge.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

This was super fun! Thanks @alexandrapike.bsky.social for proposing and to @chloebrunskill.bsky.social and all speakers and attendees for making this day happen! 🥹

🥳

It is a great pleasure to share this new collaborative work on the Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory Representations with @fnim-lab.bsky.social @cvlneuro.bsky.social @psychologyuea.bsky.social

osf.io/preprints/ps...

On the left: an illustration from Brooke's 1904 rendition of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, where Little bear discovers their favourite chair is broken 😲. On the right, a sketch of what a corresponding "situation model" might contain.

How might stories shed light on brain function? Check out this opinion piece by @alexbarnett.bsky.social and I about the DMN and "situation models" -- our understanding of the current "state of affairs" in a story (or even experience).

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Was meant to be presenting at #BACN25 on Thursday. Unfortunately, COVID has decided otherwise. My poster will still make an appearance though. Even better? It’s presented by @aidanhorner.bsky.social instead! Go check it out on Thursday along with other lab posters on narratives, objects and schema.

Hi! Nice to virtually meet you! Here is the QR code to a PDF of the poster. Glad you found it interesting! If you have any questions or want more details, happy to chat about it! 🙂

captain america is holding a hammer and says avengers assemble Alt: Captain America holding Mjölnir and says: “Avengers… Assemble!”

Mixed-effects modellers, assemble!

Just dropped a (very niche) blog on the weird quirks that occur with uncorrelated random effects and the trifecta of packages: lme4, afex, and performance (in R).

Read here 👉 sites.google.com/view/jamieco...

#rstats #MixedModels #lme4 #afex #performanceR

So happy this is finally out! Despite Covid delays and thanks to persistence by @arimoccia.bsky.social + the helpful reviewers

Starting to uncover how memory cues and goals interact - with implications for how we understand memory reconstruction during retrieval

Thank you Giuli!! 🙏

A Meta-analytic Review of the Effectiveness of Spacing and Retrieval Practice for Mathematics Learning - Educational Psychology Review Spaced retrieval practice harnesses two well-studied phenomena: the spacing effect, where spacing out practice over several sessions leads to a gain in retention compared to massed practice in one ses...

Happy publication day to first author @ewanmurray.bsky.social! A lot of hard work by Ewan went into this, so it is great to see if fully published.

A Meta-analytic Review of the Effectiveness of Spacing and Retrieval Practice for Mathematics Learning

#cognition #psychscisky #neuroskyence

📣 New job alert! I'm looking for a 2-year research assistant for a project on word learning from childhood to adulthood. Come and join us in lovely York! Please RT 🙏 @yorkpsychology.bsky.social jobs.york.ac.uk/vacancy/rese...

Thanks Marius!! 🙏 Hope you’ll enjoy reading it!

Thanks for reading till the end. Questions and comments are welcome!

Thanks to #FundaçãoBial for funding and to @jamiecockcroft.bsky.social for stats advice!🧵9/9

Results suggest at least two stages of selection within the retrieval cascade: 1) external cues modify which memories get reinstated & 2) further goal-driven processing amplifies targeted memories in line with goals. For simple model inspired by doi.org/10.1016/j.ti... 🧵8/9

Final result: people also reinstated neural patterns as they prepared to retrieve the upcoming trial (at least when cues were words). As predicted by the encoding specificity principle this preparatory goal-related reinstatement may be how selective retrieval is achieved🧵7/9

This differed with our original findings for the left parietal ERP. This ERP (Bottom Left) was more target-selective than reinstatement (Top Left) when cues matched targets more, but when cues matched non-targets more, only reinstatement was selective for non-targets (Right for comparison)🧵6/9

Decoding of scalp ERPs showed: reinstatement of study phase neural patterns was target-selective when the external cues matched targets = audio with word cues (Exp1) or pictures with picture cues (Exp2), but was reversed (non-target > target) when cue match was greater with non-targets🧵5/9

But the left parietal ERP may reflect the outcome of high-level cortical processing during recollection. As goal-driven reconstruction can transform initial pattern-completed neural representations, we reasoned that goals and cues might impact recollection at multiple stages🧵4/9