** We have up to TWO funded PhD positions available in our lab!! Apply below to find new ways to enhance memory👇 Pls retweet **

Deadline: 2nd December

1. Cross-species closed-loopTMR: tinyurl.com/bddu4tp6

2. TUS and TMR in humans:
tinyurl.com/jjws5ctj

Happy to chat to interested applicants.

Image shows the first two printed pages of the paper “A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder” by Cecilia Lai and colleagues, published in Nature in 2001 (volume 413, pages 519-523). The abstract reads as follows: Individuals affected with developmental disorders of speech and language have substantial difficulty acquiring expressive and/or receptive language in the absence of any profound sensory or neurological impairment and despite adequate intelligence and opportunity. Although studies of twins consistently indicate that a significant genetic component is involved, most families segregating speech and language deficits show complex patterns of inheritance, and a gene that predisposes individuals to such disorders has not been identified. We have studied a unique three-generation pedigree, KE, in which a severe speech and language disorder is transmitted as an autosomal-dominant monogenic trait. Our previous work mapped the locus responsible, SPCH1, to a 5.6-cM interval of region 7q31 on chromosome 7. We also identified an unrelated individual, CS, in whom speech and language impairment is associated with a chromosomal translocation involving the SPCH1 interval. Here we show that the gene FOXP2, which encodes a putative transcription factor containing a polyglutamine tract and a forkhead DNA-binding domain, is directly disrupted by the translocation breakpoint in CS. In addition, we identify a point mutation in affected members of the KE family that alters an invariant amino-acid residue in the forkhead domain. Our findings suggest that FOXP2 is involved in the developmental process that culminates in speech and language.

Twenty-four years ago today, our paper “A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder” was published: www.nature.com/articles/350....
A personal thread about the ups & downs of the journey we took to get to that point....1/n
🗣️🧬🧪

I’m pleased to share our new paper, “Hippocampal ripple diversity organizes neuronal reactivation dynamics in the offline brain”, out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social !

With @vitorlds.bsky.social and David Dupret, we show that diversity in ripple current profiles shapes reactivation dynamics

Planning with attractors in PFC!

I’m super excited to finally put my recent work with @behrenstimb.bsky.social on bioRxiv, where we develop a new mechanistic theory of how PFC structures adaptive behaviour using attractor dynamics in space and time!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🚨We believe this is a major step forward in how we study hippocampus function in healthy humans.

Using novel behavioral tasks, fMRI, RL & RNN modeling, and transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS), we demonstrate the causal role of hippocampus in relational structure learning.

Our new paper out now in Science explores how neural activity in the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) *drifts* over time - and *jumps* at key boundaries - to help organize events in memory.

🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Here's a quick summary of what we found 🧵👇

Neuroscience needs to empower early-career researchers, not fund moon shots Large-scale projects run the risk of stifling scientific independence. Instead, let’s explore alternative mechanisms of collaboration.

Large-scale projects run the risk of stifling scientific independence. Instead, let’s explore alternative mechanisms of collaboration, writes @neuralreckoning.bsky.social.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/funding/neur...

*** Come join us !! We are recruiting !! ***
How does the brain generate beliefs that go beyond direct experience? How do these mechanisms go awry in psychosis?

The Barron lab tinyurl.com/bdf4drjf @MRCBNDU @NDCNOxford are recruiting a new postdoc tinyurl.com/ut4vbwt4 to work in mouse models

This is not to be missed. You’ll spend your day trying to make RNNs psychotic. And we’ll pay you for it!

"Science is an investment.

We will put forward a new 500 million package for 2025-2027 to support the best and the brightest researchers and scientists from Europe and around the world."

— President @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu at the ‘Choose Europe for Science' event at La Sorbonne 🇫🇷

How do cognitive maps fail? And how can this help us understand/treat psychosis? My lab at @oxexppsy.bsky.social is hiring a Postdoc tinyurl.com/2p935hhz and RA tinyurl.com/3myfpb78 to answer these questions in mouse models.
Here's why you might want to join: 🧵

Constructing future behavior in the hippocampal formation through composition and replay - Nature Neuroscience A model of compositional state spaces in the hippocampus shows latent learning and rapid generalization. Bakermans et al. show that this model predicts the emergence of place responses in replay.

Happy to share the latest version of our work on compositional maps in hippocampus with Jo Warren, @jcrwhittington.bsky.social, @behrenstimb.bsky.social. We propose hippocampus constructs maps from cortical building blocks in replay – now with empirical support! www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/9

I wrote an introduction to RL for neuroscience last year that was just published in NBDT: tinyurl.com/5f58zdy3

This review aims to provide some intuition for and derivations of RL methods commonly used in systems neuroscience, ranging from TD learning through the SR to deep and distributional RL!

Our paper "Memory reactivation generates new, adaptive behaviours that reach beyond direct experience" is now out www.nature.com/articles/s41...! With Annie Rawson, Jill O’Reilly and Helen Barron at MRC BNDU @ndcnoxford.bsky.social 1/6