New preprint led by awesome undergrad Abby Bonno! By probing temporal memory for individual items in a sequence, we uncover a 'representational space' of memories that reflects the structure of encoded experiences and provides insight into how different kinds of structure shape memory. osf.io/t5kyx

Second-order correlation learning in 2- to 4-year-old children, and its underlying mechanism Second-order correlation learning—or the capacity to infer an indirect relation between features based on separate direct relations—has been studied e…

New paper alert🚨

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

Two takeaways. First, 2- to 4-year-olds can use a process called second-order correlation (SOC) learning -- e.g., A & B go together and B & C go together, then A and C go together -- in a category context to make causal inferences.

Beautiful and impressive work from Cliona and team on visual development — with awake 2 month olds in the MRI scanner (!!)

1/7 Can infants recognise the world around them? 👶🧠 As part of the FOUNDCOG project, we scanned 134 awake infants using fMRI. Published today in Nature Neuroscience, our research reveals 2-month-old infants already possess complex visual representations in VVC that align with DNNs.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Awake Infants: Insights From More Than 750 Scanning Sessions Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in awake infants has the potential to reveal how the early developing brain gives rise to cognition and behavior. However, awake infant fMRI poses signifi...

Congratulations to @lillianbehm.bsky.social, Nick Turk-Browne, and a huge team for putting together this paper (out today) on lessons from a decade of attempts to study awake infants with fMRI:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Awake Infants: Insights From More Than 750 Scanning Sessions Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in awake infants has the potential to reveal how the early developing brain gives rise to cognition and behavior. However, awake infant fMRI poses signifi....

Awake infant fMRI offers a rare window into early brain and cognitive development. In a new paper out now in Infancy, we leverage data from hundreds of infant scans from the Saxe and Turk-Browne Labs to reveal what factors drive scanning success — and how future studies can maximize data retention!

Deep learning in fetal, infant, and toddler neuroimaging research Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being integrated into everyday tasks and work environments. However, its adoption in medical image analys…

This paper was an awesome collaborative effort of a @fitngin.bsky.social working group. It provides a detailed review of how DNNs can be used to support dev neuro research

@lauriebayet.bsky.social and I wrote the network modeling section about how DNNs can be used to test developmental theories 🧵

How Prediction of the Future Affects Encoding of the Present: Cooperation or Competition? Abstract. Each day brings new experiences and the opportunity to form new episodic memories. However, our everyday experiences are not isolated episodes; rather, there is significant spatial and tempo...

In a new paper, I delve into these two findings and muse on when prediction might help vs. hurt memory (and discuss why this matters for models of memory and the hippocampus). This is my first solo-author paper, and I had a lot of fun putting these ideas on paper! direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

We can use past experience to make predictions about the future. How do predictions affect our memory for the present? My own work (tinyurl.com/42kyukch) suggests that predictions compete with memory. But other recent work (tinyurl.com/2ekd4wr6) found the opposite--cooperation! What's going on here?

Our new paper is out in @natmed.nature.com 😱! A thread:

Can our thoughts and feelings directly affect our physical well-being? Our pre-registered, double-blind RCT investigated this by testing if modulating the brain's reward system could enhance immune responses to vaccination.

Agency alters memory organization during free recall - PubMed This study examined how agentic decisions in the absence of explicit rewards influence memory organization. Participants studied lists of items to assign as gifts to two characters-either choosing freely (Choice group) or following instructions (Fixed group). During free recall, participants in the …

Agency reorganizes memory around relevant decisions. This was collaboration the deeply missed Sarah DuBrow and steer-headed by our grad students @lindsayrait.bsky.social and Elizabeth Horwath.

p.s. the task design involves curating gift baskets.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41436249/

This project is trying to raise science awareness by doing short videos about cancelled research — including mine.

We are recruiting a lab manager/research assistant to start in early 2026! The successful candidate will conduct awake infant fMRI, meet cute babies, and join a fun team!

More details (e.g. responsibilities): soc.stanford.edu/people/#join...

Apply here: careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/social-...

Join us on Thursday, December 4th at 10am EST (7am PST, 3pm GMT) for our next free Functional Analysis Fall event:

Brain age modeling with fetal and neonatal neuroimaging data, featuring @huilisun.bsky.social and Dr. Kiho Im!

Register at: tinyurl.com/FAF3brainage

New paper from the lab, "Perceiving Event Structure in Brief Actions," now out in Cognitive Psychology :)

Led by the inimitable Zekun Sun

This was my lab's first foray into event cognition

gift link: sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A developmental framework of interpersonal neural synchrony Interpersonal neural synchrony (INS), the temporal alignment of brain activities between individuals, has been proposed as a biomarker for successful …

🥳 So pleased to share our new publication: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... The whole @kinderstudien.bsky.social lab got together to do a little scientific retreat last year and this is the result - a truly developmental perspective on the phenomenon of interpersonal neural synchrony 🧠🧠 👨‍🍼👩‍🍼

Really enjoyed chatting with @michaelhobbes.bsky.social for this episode! In addition to being a delight to talk to, Michael was _extremely_ committed to getting the facts right & engaged very earnestly with our feedback. A scientist's dream.

Collective Action Is Essential for Universities in Current Political Climate In this Q&A, Richard Aslin shares his thoughts on the real meaning of “academic freedom” and why members of the higher education community have reason to be cautiously optimistic.

Inspiring Q and A with Dick Aslin! Look for more such content over the next few months from @psychscience.bsky.social
www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

Join us on Tuesday, November 18th at 11:00am EST for our next free Functional Analysis Fall event:

Encoding Models for Understanding High-Level Representations in Early Development, featuring Dr. Freddy Kamps and Dr. Sarah Jessen!

Register at: tinyurl.com/fitngFAF2rep...

🚨 New preprint on the first infant 7T MRI project in North America! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
We showcase that by leveraging 7T for infants, we can improve data quality and thereby facilitate precision functional mapping in early development.

Join us on Monday, November 3rd at 12:00pm EST for our free Functional Analysis Fall event:

Functional alignment as a tool to improve and expand your analyses with FIT data, featuring @camerontellis.bsky.social

Register at: tinyurl.com/fitngFAF

Unfolding event structure distorts subjective time Our experience of time is often distorted in striking ways. Although prior work has shown that boundaries between events can shape temporal perception…

Our experience of time is powerfully shaped by boundaries between events (i.e., going from one meeting to the next). But what about time *within an event*? In new work, we find reliable distortions of time based on internal event structure (e.g., beginnings, middles, and ends)! tinyurl.com/n8mn2sn7

Woohoo!! Excited for this free (!) virtual talk series on novel ways to analyse your fetal/infant/toddler neuroimaging data! First talk on Monday 🍂🍁

Competitive Cortical Prioritization Emerges for Trained Objects across the First Year of Life Learning to detect and recognize a broad range of visual objects is a crucial developmental task during the first year of life. However, many of the neurophysiological changes underlying the emergence...

Im very excited about this work out from our recent infant ssVEP study! Led by postdoc Maeve Boylan! After infants learn about objects while reading a book with a parent, their brains prioritize the processing of familiarity. www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...

Volume 37 Issue 11 | Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience | MIT Press Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience | 37 | 11 | November 2025

"We hope to inspire curiosity ... prompting researchers to uncover why children experience the world so distinctively and what this reveals about cognitive development."

@jocn.bsky.social's November issue presents a special focus on the development of event segmentation: #NeuroSky #cognition

So cool Omri!!! Can’t wait to read in full!

thrilled to share our preprint on false memories in naturalistic recollection!

Distinct paths to false memory revealed in hundreds of narrative recalls

paper: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

w/ phoebehc.bsky.social (co-first) Vy A. Vo @davidpoeppel.bsky.social @toddgureckis.bsky.social

thread below 👇

I'm recruiting PhD students to join my new lab in Fall 2026! The Shared Minds Lab at @usc.edu will combine deep learning and ecological human neuroscience to better understand how we communicate our thoughts from one brain to another.

Excited to share that I'm joining WashU in January as an Assistant Prof in Psych & Brain Sciences! 🧠✨!

I'm also recruiting grad students to start next September - come hang out with us! Details about our lab here: www.deckerlab.com

Reposts are very welcome! 🙌 Please help spread the word!