I taught this in Germany, and even within a leftist student crowd who all biked to the seminar, the need to own a car for a happy life was taken as self-evident (you just don’t get the same speed when you take your goat on the Autobahn).
Exactly three weeks before my PhD defense, the third and last paper of the thesis was published!
We tested the neural correlates and representational and behavioural consequences of updating vs separating events after prediction errors.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
Three studies of EU, UK, and US elections show that self-serving bias moderates the relationship between future
thinking and remembering.
@mariusboeltzig.bsky.social
@scottcolepsych.bsky.social
@clarerathbone.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
This was a wonderful project together with @schubotzlab.bsky.social, @scottcolepsych.bsky.social, and @clarerathbone.bsky.social - and now finally published at @commspsychol.nature.com.
They also misremember what they had predicted before the election: If they now think the election was fair (because they won it), they overestimate the assessment of election fairness they had made before the election.
Across three 2024 elections, we found that voters shift assessments during future thinking and remembering depending on election success: For instance, they increase their perception of importance and fairness if their party wins the election.
Remembering and future thinking are related - but self-serving biases can influence their relationships.
This is what our new paper shows in the context of political elections.
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
We are excited to share out new study investigating the importance of temporal and content structure when watching movies! doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
Such an amazingly active group, with so much curiosity and knowledge. It is so impressive that despite massive power and heating outages in Kyiv, so many people turn up to discuss memory. An inspiring reminder of how great science and learning are. Grateful to do this with @linniplidot.bsky.social
Day 1 focused on the cog-neuroscience of memory, with great talks by Mikael Johansson and Inês Bramão from @lund-memory-lab.bsky.social, followed today by great lectures on mental time travel (also in patients) by @scottcolepsych.bsky.social and on (in)voluntary retrieval by Krystian Barzykowski.
Just kicked off the Kyiv Winter School of Memory 2026 with over 70 participants of different universities in Ukraine. So rewarding to see this slightly crazy idea become a reality. Thanks to @linniplidot.bsky.social and Karine Malysheva (National University of Kyiv) for organising this with me.
So now, it is time to find out why. Thanks to @officialsarmac.bsky.social and especially the Diversity and Inclusion Committee for their assessment and making this study possible.
This will allow us to collect follow-up data on personal and collective future thinking in Ukraine, this time also including a sample of LGBTQ+ people. In a previous study (in preparation), we found that Ukrainians were MORE positive about their collective future than Germans and Poles!
Happy to belatedly share some good pre-Christmas news: My colleague Karine Malysheva from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and I secured a Collaborative Diversity and Inclusion grant from @officialsarmac.bsky.social.
I'm excited to share our new paper about initial prediction errors, which arise spontaneously at first exposure to coherent novel stimuli.
In this study we investigated the neural and mnemonic consequences of initial PEs compared to those of experimentally induced PEs.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
If there is an account on Bluesky that deserves way more followers, it is this one!
How do gaze patterns and hand movements differ between actors in naturalistic manipulation tasks when one person's action respond to the other's? New research from our lab, led by post-doc Anoush, using eye tracking and motion capture elucidates these processes. www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy...
I think part of it is that the philosophy "hits over time" is still very strong in Germany. Both her and Strelow seemed to prefer not to shoot if they cannot be sure that they will hit. Under most conditions, this leads to excellent hit rates - and now to two dreadfully slow range times...
We're now a team of 12 people in 8 countries, and preparing papers on future thinking (a bit of anticipatory clickbait: the results are genuinely stunning), Flashbulb Memories, and traumatic memories. More data collections are to come. Watch this space - and help Ukrainian defenders.
In a seminar, I had the chance to report how I started the collaboration with Ukrainian colleagues and how we collected data there. Weirdly, that story started in the russian city of Perm in 2013 - and the project somehow feels like the culmination of much of my adult life.
Once again, my admiration for Ukraine grew even more. It is inspiring to see how our colleagues have adapted to the situation and simply keep on doing their work - and how motivated they are to even make use of the situation to change the country and achieve stronger alignment with Europe.
We secured a grant from Lund University, allowing us to invite two collaborators, Karine Malyesheva and Illia Zarubin, from Taras Shevchenko University Kyiv for a week. Great discussions on future possibilities.
@mikael-johansson.bsky.social @linniplidot.bsky.social @lund-memory-lab.bsky.social
That was an exciting week with NAC (Natural and Artificial Cognition) and the SweCog (Swedish Cognition) conference in Lund!🤩
We had the opportunity to present our research on eye tracking and multi tasking, social inferences, how our brain extracts specifics and gist, and war memories in Ukraine.
It was great to present my poster on distinct encoding after large predictions errors at ICON last week. Thanks to all who passed by to have a chat (i.e., shouting at each other at the top of one‘s lungs).
(It's also the perfect summer read, as it is long enough to keep you busy even on more prolonged train rides)
A huge thanks to my co-authors (including @nliedtke.bsky.social, @ssiestrup.bsky.social, @moritzwurm.bsky.social, @schubotzlab.bsky.social) for their substantial contributions to this work.
You can read it in NeuroImage:
doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
4) Both prior precision (how strong the prediction is) and prior accuracy (how good the prediction is) uniquely contribute to these processes with different time profiles.
3) These effects are implemented by reinstatement of the original episode (used for prediction) during the new and mismatching input. The more reinstatement, the more distinct encoding.
1) Larger PEs promote detailed memories that are more neurally distinct from the memories that were used for the prediction.
2) Medium PEs lead to less distinct memories, negatively impacting recognition performance.
