Chris Bird
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chrismbird.bsky.social
Chris Bird
@chrismbird.bsky.social
Memory researcher, University of Sussex
Reposted by Chris Bird
I wrote a thing on episodic memory and systems consolidation. I hope you all enjoy it and/or find it interesting.

A neural state space for episodic memories

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

#neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition 🧪
A neural state space for episodic memories
Episodic memories are highly dynamic and change in nonlinear ways over time. This dynamism is not captured by existing systems consolidation theories …
www.sciencedirect.com
November 3, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Reposted by Chris Bird
The brain represents the world around us as a series of neural states - stable patterns of activity that change as we move from one event to the next.

New paper by @selmalugtmeijer.bsky.social showing that neural states get longer as people age. #PsychSciSky

nature.com/articles/s42003-025-08792-4
Temporal dedifferentiation of neural states with age during naturalistic viewing - Communications Biology
Movie fMRI data reveals age-related lengthening of neural states in visual and prefrontal regions, reflecting reduced temporal differentiation while preserved alignment with perceived events suggests stable coarse event segmentation.
www.nature.com
September 30, 2025 at 4:03 PM
📣 Helpful thread about a great paper alert!

Okay - I am biased, but I am super proud of this paper and @dkvarga.bsky.social has done a truly awesome job of running this project (3 separate fMRI studies!). Thanks also to our amazing colleagues for their support.
So happy to share our paper on the role of the hippocampus as a mismatch detector:
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

We show that the hippocampus detects mismatches between ongoing experiences and episodic memories but not generalised schematic knowledge.

See 🧵for how we got here:
#neuroskyence #PsychSciSky
September 4, 2025 at 6:13 PM
Reposted by Chris Bird
We make predictions based on general knowledge and/or specific memories. Different brain areas are active when these distinct predictions are violated – and hippocampus selectively responds to prediction errors based on episodic memory.

Cool work by @chrismbird.bsky.social @ayab.bsky.social et al!
Hippocampal mismatch signals are based on episodic memories and not schematic knowledge | PNAS
Prediction errors drive learning by signaling mismatches between expectations and reality, but the neural systems supporting these computations rem...
www.pnas.org
August 25, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by Chris Bird
Proud to share the first preprint of my PhD w/ @barense.bsky.social & Mursal Jahed:

“Putting the testing effect to the test in the wild: Retrieval enhances real-world memories and promotes their semantic integration while preserving episodic integrity”

See thread! 🧵 osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
June 19, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Reposted by Chris Bird
New preprint! How do we integrate new information into prior knowledge? We find that existing knowledge enables rapid new learning but that interleaved replay during sleep promotes integration of new and old information. Modeling suggests a sleep context suppression mechanism.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
June 10, 2025 at 12:36 PM
Reposted by Chris Bird
It's such a shame this article is framed by the headline as being about screens, when actually its about the paucity of outdoor space for play, and lack of time within education settings to make the most of what little outdoor space there is. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
Children in England growing up ‘sedentary, scrolling and alone’, say experts
Raising the Nation Play Commission report recommends ban on ‘no ball games’ signs and raising digital age of consent to 16
www.theguardian.com
June 11, 2025 at 8:18 AM
Reposted by Chris Bird
Medial temporal cortex supports object perception by integrating over visuospatial sequences

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

Looks like an interesting study from @dyamins.bsky.social and colleagues
Medial temporal cortex supports object perception by integrating over visuospatial sequences
Perception unfolds across multiple timescales. For humans and other primates, many object-centric visual attributes can be inferred ‘at a glance’ (i.e…
www.sciencedirect.com
June 11, 2025 at 9:59 AM
Really nice study led by Claire Lancaster and supported by other brilliant Sussex colleagues - in particular former PhD student Jess Daly. Greebles task is sensitive to subtle perceptual deficits in APOE e4 carriers in mid-life (which get worse with age and number of e4 alleles).
June 11, 2025 at 10:18 AM
Reposted by Chris Bird
We recently published a new paper investigating APOE effects in Cam-CAN @camcan-2010.bsky.social movie dataset. Examining various measures we failed to find any APOE effects in healthy individuals. You can read more about it in the paper doi.org/10.1177/2398... or the thread below
February 28, 2025 at 3:46 PM
Reposted by Chris Bird
The BNS is delighted to present this first look at the 🧠 SPRING MEETING 🧠 2025 programme, and announce we've an 🚨 EXTENDED ABSTRACT DEADLINE (Feb 17th)! 🚨 All this great science for just a £15 registration fee. Or for free if your a BNS member. Visit www.the-BNS.org.
#neuroskyence
#psychscisky
January 29, 2025 at 10:42 PM
Reposted by Chris Bird
New paper led by @silvia-anderle.bsky.social

Lifestyle matters for genetic Alzheimer’s disease risk: APOE4 reduces neurovascular function most in an already-stressed system,  when neurons are active and mice do less exercise.

I'll tell you all about it! 🧪 #neuroscience #alzheimers

rdcu.be/d74uh
APOE4 and sedentary lifestyle synergistically impair neurovascular function in the visual cortex of awake mice
Communications Biology - Lifestyle matters for genetic Alzheimer’s disease risk: In vivo imaging of mouse blood vessels and neurons shows that APOE4 reduces neurovascular function most in an...
rdcu.be
January 30, 2025 at 3:12 PM
Reposted by Chris Bird
Excited to share this perspective with @yaelniv.bsky.social about how schemas might be learned and instantiated via reinforcement learning, latent cause inference, and dimensionality reduction, and what's the medial prefrontal cortex might be doing for all of these www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Schemas, reinforcement learning and the medial prefrontal cortex - Nature Reviews Neuroscience
A computational account of how schemas are learned through experience is lacking. In this Perspective, Bein and Niv synthesize schema theory and reinforcement learning research to derive computational...
www.nature.com
January 7, 2025 at 6:12 PM
Reposted by Chris Bird
🏆The BNS Elizabeth Warrington Prize 2025 will be awarded for distinguished work in neuropsychology/neuroscience by a person at an early stage in their career. 🧠
Call for nominations now open!
Deadline: April 1st. ⏱️
More info: www.the-bns.org/prizes

#neuroskyence
#psychscisky
Prizes
www.the-bns.org
January 19, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Great work and top-notch thread skills from @kasiamojescik.bsky.social ! Please take a look if you're a fan of memory, aging, subjective experience, or all three! #PsychSkySci #neuroskyence
May 16, 2024 at 1:17 PM
Reposted by Chris Bird
Check out this epic sleep DRM false memory registered report from the amazing @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social! #neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition
A registered report testing the effect of sleep on Deese-Roediger-McDermott false memory: greater lure and veridical recall but fewer intrusions after sleep @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social @mggaskell.bsky.social @aidanhorner.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....
December 11, 2023 at 12:28 PM
It was a joy to read this in a lab journal club. A really nice study with important implications for both event processing and decision making. And such a clever design! Top marks for all involved!

"Visual event boundaries restrict anchoring effects in decision-making"

#neuroskyence #PsychSciSky
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
www.pnas.org
November 29, 2023 at 11:17 AM
Reposted by Chris Bird
Attention neuroscientsts!

We just launched Neurosynth Compose: A free and open platform for neuroimaging meta-analysis. NS-Compose makes it easy to perform custom neuroimaging meta-analyses without leaving the browser.

It's live, check it out! compose.neurosynth.org
neurosynth compose
Neurosynth-Compose App
compose.neurosynth.org
November 28, 2023 at 10:52 PM
Reposted by Chris Bird
Hippocampal-cortical interactions during event boundaries support retention of complex narrative events Officially out in Neuron with
@charan-neuro.bsky.social

Brendan Cohn-Sheehy,
Mitchell Nguyen, Reesha Yadav, and James Spargo!:

authors.elsevier.com/a/1i3703BtfH...
November 8, 2023 at 5:20 PM
Reposted by Chris Bird
Ever wonder why anesthesia makes you unconscious? We figured out a piece of that puzzle.

Anesthesia blocks sensation by cutting off communication within the cortex
picower.mit.edu/news/anesthe...
#Neuroscience
November 8, 2023 at 6:08 PM
Reposted by Chris Bird
Are you a cognitive scientist with an interest in developing your own research line using neuroimaging as a tool, and in particular MRI and fMRI (at ultra high fields)? Come join the CN department at the FPN faculty of Maastricht University!!!

www.academictransfer.com/en/333964/as...
November 1, 2023 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by Chris Bird
We are pleased to announce that we are accepting nominations for 🌟The Lila R. Gleitman Prize for Early-Career Contributions to Cognitive Science 🌟

Visit cognitivesciencesociety.org/gleitman-pri... for details on the nomination and selection process. #GleitmanPrize #CogSci
October 19, 2023 at 1:59 PM
Reposted by Chris Bird
Hello everyone
My first post on bluesky: I'm a cognitive neuroscience researcher working on the effects of physical exercise and sleep on our brains and memories.
Besides that I'm interested in European and global politics, elite sports (mainly swimming and trail running) and classical music.
October 18, 2023 at 8:16 AM
Reposted by Chris Bird
Hopefully dropping a new preprint next week by the amazing @akulsatish.bsky.social. Using MEG to reveal the oscillatory dynamics involved in spatial learning, building on our previous fMRI experiment by @samberens.bsky.social:

direct.mit.edu/jocn/article...

#neuroskyence #PsychSciSky #Cognition
Tracking the Emergence of Location-based Spatial Representations in Human Scene-Selective Cortex
Abstract. Scene-selective regions of the human brain form allocentric representations of locations in our environment. These representations are independent of heading direction and allow us to know w...
direct.mit.edu
October 13, 2023 at 9:18 AM
Reposted by Chris Bird
Jumping on the bandwagon...

Hi I'm Hugo Spiers, PI of the Spatial Cognition Lab @ University College London. I research the neural basis of spatial navigation & memory. I play with VR, mobile apps, fMRI, GPS-tracking, agent based modelling, and recently fNIRS. I lack all skills in sourdough baking.
Hello bluesky - I'm Rogier Kievit, PI of the LCDlab @ Donders Institute. I work on modeling change in brain structure & cognitive performance across the lifespan. I also value open science, EDI & trying to contribute to climate action efforts, as well as pandemic cliché hobbies: running & sourdough
October 12, 2023 at 11:51 AM