Athina Tzovara
athinatzovara.bsky.social
Athina Tzovara
@athinatzovara.bsky.social
Neuroscientist at University of Bern

https://neuro.inf.unibe.ch/
​Our new paper on auditory processing in NREM sleep is online! We study how iERP and HFA responses in the temporal lobe are modulated by slow waves of sleep:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Congratulations to Sigurd Alnes for his brilliant work and to the entire team!
November 6, 2025 at 7:55 AM
Reposted by Athina Tzovara
What happens in the brain when we manipulate our thoughts?

We asked 30 epilepsy patients to mentally invert short melodies.

Intracerebral #iEEG recordings suggest brain synchrony and sensory inhibition are key for mental manipulation:

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

#neuroskyence #musicscience
Brain Dynamics of Mental Manipulation
Humans effortlessly juggle their internal thoughts, but the neuronal dynamics that support mental manipulation are largely unknown. Leveraging the high spatiotemporal fidelity of intracranial recordin...
doi.org
October 22, 2025 at 5:25 AM
Reposted by Athina Tzovara
Slow waves during sleep are fundamental for neural homeostasis and are impaired in neurodegenerative diseases. But what about sleep-like slow waves during wakefulness? Are these slow waves altered in Parkinson's disease? Are these slow waves uncovering psychosis?
Sleep-like slow waves during wakefulness uncover a malignant form of Parkinson’s disease
Slow waves during sleep are fundamental for neural homeostasis, metabolic regulation, and waste clearance, and are known to be altered in neurodegenerative diseases. Sleep-like slow waves (SLSW) have ...
www.medrxiv.org
September 8, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Reposted by Athina Tzovara
🤔How does the human brain predict unexpected sounds?
Our new study shows that the prefrontal cortex doesn’t work as a single unit. Instead, the orbitofrontal and lateral prefrontal cortex make distinct, time-sensitive contributions. #iEEG #BrainLesion #OFC #LPFC
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Predictive encoding of auditory sequences in the human prefrontal cortex
Humans extract regularities from the environment to form expectations that guide perception and optimize behavior. Although the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is central to this process, the relative contrib...
doi.org
August 29, 2025 at 8:08 AM
We are hiring! We have open PhD and postdoc positions in Bern. Join us to study sleep/wake circuits, and/or auditory functions with iEEG/EEG #iEEG #Neurojobs

Postdoc: neuro.inf.unibe.ch/menu/announc...
PhD: neuro.inf.unibe.ch/menu/announc...
Open positions
neuro.inf.unibe.ch
July 21, 2025 at 8:39 AM
Reposted by Athina Tzovara
Have a look at @neuromorphicboki.bsky.social tour de force: leveraging dynamical independence on #EEG to quantify *and* describe emergent dynamics under different anaesthetics!

For #consciousness, less can be more: conscious states show lower emergence but more structured emergent dynamics.

🧠🧪
📜🪇[PUBLISHED]: NEW PREPRINT!🪇📜

I am incredibly excited to announce that we have published our paper on how "Dynamical independence reveals anaesthetic specific fragmentation of emergent structure in neural dynamics"
w@thomasandrillon.bsky.social @anilseth.bsky.social Barnett, Carter

Strap in!
1/n
Dynamical independence reveals anaesthetic specific fragmentation of emergent structure in neural dynamics
Conscious experience depends on the coordinated activity of neural processes that span multiple scales--from synapses to whole-brain dynamics. A recently introduced measure, dynamical independence, id...
www.biorxiv.org
July 20, 2025 at 8:33 AM
Reposted by Athina Tzovara
🧠 Paper out!

We investigated how hippocampal and cortical ripples support memory during movie watching. We found that:

🎬 Hippocampal ripples mark event boundaries
🧩 Cortical ripples predict later recall

Ripples may help transform real-life experiences into lasting memories!

rdcu.be/eui9l
Movie-watching evokes ripple-like activity within events and at event boundaries
Nature Communications - The neural processes involved in memory formation for realistic experiences remain poorly understood. Here, the authors found that ripple-like activity in the human...
rdcu.be
July 1, 2025 at 1:26 PM