this work was done with @annaschapiro.bsky.social et al., including @lizsiefert.bsky.social + @cgonciulea.bsky.social !

Super excited to share this preprint! How do we disentangle underlying structure from the particular features of a learning episode to benefit future learning? We find that memory reactivation during sleep promotes this structure abstraction process.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Knowledge Mapper An interactive tool that maps out everything you know. Answer questions and watch your personalized knowledge map take shape.

Curious what a representation of "everything" you know might look like? Wonder how you might fill it in?

Check out our demo and paper (led by @paxt0n4.bsky.social and now out in @natcomms.nature.com ), or read on to learn more!

Demo: context-lab.com/mapper/
Paper: www.doi.org/10.1038/s414...

We've posted a new fMRI study of semantic relations (has-part, is-a, made-of, etc.), a key aspect of language. We find that relations are represented in the same brain regions as are other semantic concepts, though voxels tend to be selective for only one relation or another.
doi.org/10.64898/202...

they are from embeddings that were already compressed to 250, but we're exploring a range of dimensionality. the dimensions are not interpretable, but the goal is to see if the structure of these networks relate to semantic variables, so tbd!

kate, our lab tech, is doing some really cool work constructing concept networks from text embeddings and aligning them with human concepts. seeing the networks come to life is 🔥

Psycholinguistic Databases, Stimuli, Utilities — Concepts & Cognition Laboratory

2026 big update to the psycholinguistic database page! If you know of corpora, lexical databases, or other resources that I've missed, please LMK. Trying to keep this thing relatively current and could use the help www.reilly-coglab.com/data

⭐ My lab is recruiting a grad student for fall 2026! ⭐

🧠 If you are interested in semantic learning & memory, and want to use fMRI + computational models to ask these questions, I'll be excited to hear from you. Come join us in Bing!

🔗 sites.google.com/view/spinslab

Job link:

binghamton.interviewexchange.com/jobofferdeta...

My lab is hiring!

We have an opening for a full-time RA to focus on computational modeling and fMRI analysis. Programming skills are required. Psych/cog/neuro experience not necessary but a big plus. A great fit for someone who wants lab experience before grad school.

Details and job link below ⬇️

Conference poster with the title: Memory reactivation during sleep facilitates abstraction of category structure.

See you at CNS! We’ve got new data suggesting that reactivating a recently learned category during sleep facilitates abstraction of category structure & promotes transfer learning to a new category. Transfer was not seen immediately or after a delay—only after sleep+TMR. w/ @annaschapiro.bsky.social

1. For the past thirty years I've had the best job in the world.


I've had the opportunity to follow my curiosity; explore the workings of nature and society; mentor students and junior colleagues in the same process; and teach generations of students about it all.

wishing I could be rallying with the philly science community today—do some shouting for me!!!

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

Just finished a draft of my Models of Memory (grad) course that I'm teaching this spring! Please share/borrow/re-use/follow along as desired, and if you have feedback or suggestions I'd really love to hear (especially while I can still change it)!

All materials are here: github.com/ContextLab/m...

list of banned keywords

🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.

congrats Anna!!!

would love to be added to this!

Top caption says: "When you run into someone you haven't seen in a while and can't remember their name", and a picture below contains Pauly Walnuts from the Sopranos saying: "Heh heh there he is"

going to a conference in your first semester as a PI

see ya at #psynom24 !

🙋🏻‍♀️

would love to be added!

🙋🏻‍♀️

✋

🙋🏻‍♀️

SPiNS Lab S P i N S L A B

Hello again, bluesky! Reintroducing myself with my new lab's new website: sites.google.com/view/spinslab

If you're interested in joining our team at Binghamton, I'm recruiting a grad student this cycle—apply!

Text of the job description that can also be found on the application portal.

🚨Job alert!

My new lab at Binghamton University is hiring a full-time lab manager ("assistant"). This is a great fit for a recent grad looking for cog/comp neuro experience before grad school.

Details below, feel free to reach out with questions!

binghamton.interviewexchange.com/jobofferdeta...

Recent statistics shift object representations in parahippocampal cortex Our representations of the world need to be stable enough to support general knowledge but flexible enough to incorporate new information as our environment changes. How does the human brain manage this stability-plasticity trade-off? We analyzed a large dataset in which participants viewed objects embedded in thousands of natural scenes across many fMRI sessions. Semantic item representations were located by jointly leveraging a voxelwise encoding model to find reliable item representations and a word-embedding model to evaluate semantic content. Within the medial temporal lobe, semantic item representations in hippocampal subfield CA1, parahippocampal cortex, and perirhinal cortex gradually drifted across a period of multiple months. However, rapid plasticity was observed only in parahippocampal cortex, such that item co-occurrence statistics warped item representations within a single session. In conjunction with whole-brain analyses, these results suggest that the brain solves the stability-plasticity trade-off by promoting plasticity in only a subset of semantic regions. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

Are semantic representations stable or plastic over time? VERY excited to share this preprint, revealing plasticity within the MTL: reps in parahippocampal cortex drift over ~8 months and are also rapidly reshaped within ~1 hour. w/ @annaschapiro.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New preprint! We show that category structure rapidly warps memory for individual object features according to their roles in the category. Features shared across exemplars pull together while unique features stay apart. With @annaschapiro.bsky.social and Cody Dong. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Syllabi Policies for AI Generative Tools

Just created my first syllabus that includes a policy on AI assistance. This resource was super helpful: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

and feel free to reach out via email with questions, or just because!