Bryan Hong
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bryanhong.bsky.social
Bryan Hong
@bryanhong.bsky.social
Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto studying what, how, and why we remember

https://bryan-hong.netlify.app/
Reposted by Bryan Hong
I'm surprised I only came across it now, but this review on improving communication in data visualization is excellent.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
The Science of Visual Data Communication: What Works - Steven L. Franconeri, Lace M. Padilla, Priti Shah, Jeffrey M. Zacks, Jessica Hullman, 2021
Effectively designed data visualizations allow viewers to use their powerful visual systems to understand patterns in data across science, education, health, an...
journals.sagepub.com
November 19, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
I recently discovered Conventional Comments (conventionalcomments.org) for providing a pseudo-standard set of labels for feedback and just tried it for an article review and it was really helpful to specify issues vs. thoughts vs. suggestions, etc. Hopefully it's helpful for the authors too!
November 17, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
Thrilled to announce a new paper out this weekend in
@cognitionjournal.bsky.social.

Moral psychologists almost always use self-report scales to study moral judgment. But there's a problem: the meaning of these scales is inherently relative.

A 2 min demo (and a short thread):

1/7
September 28, 2025 at 9:45 PM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
A memory can be represented at different levels of granularity, from highly specific to generalized.

Different representational formats of a memory can be used at different times or in different contexts, and draw on different neural representations.

doi.org/10.31234/osf...
OSF
doi.org
September 25, 2025 at 6:58 PM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
Now on CRAN, ggdiagram is a #ggplot2 extension that draws diagrams programmatically in #Rstats. Allows for precise control in how objects, labels, and equations are placed in relation to each other.
wjschne.github.io/ggdiagram/ar...
August 20, 2025 at 10:43 AM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
How might stories shed light on brain function? Check out this opinion piece by @alexbarnett.bsky.social and I about the DMN and "situation models" -- our understanding of the current "state of affairs" in a story (or even experience).

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
September 5, 2025 at 1:34 PM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
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 Bryan Hong
Happy to share "The Dynamics of Caregiver Unpredictability Shape Moment-to-Moment Infant Looking During Dyadic Interaction," out now in Child Development thanks to a large team of people I worked on this with! srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirec...
<em>Child Development</em> | SRCD Journal | Wiley Online Library
Cognitive development is associated with how predictable caregivers are, but the mechanisms driving this are unclear. One possibility is caregiver predictability initially shapes how infants gather i...
srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
August 6, 2025 at 3:08 PM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
📣 New preprint from the SCIMaP team!

Across three studies, we show that communicating the economic impact of NIH funding cuts—especially with interactive quizzes and maps—decreases approval and motivates action to oppose the cuts, across the political spectrum. 🧵 1/8
osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
August 4, 2025 at 9:52 PM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
New paper with @mujianing.bsky.social & @prestonlab.bsky.social! We propose a simple model for human memory of narratives: we uniformly sample incoming information at a constant rate. This explains behavioral data much better than variable-rate sampling triggered by event segmentation or surprisal.
Efficient uniform sampling explains non-uniform memory of narrative stories https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.31.667952v1
August 1, 2025 at 4:45 PM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
📢 New commentary out today in Nature Human Behaviour!
We argue that behavior change interventions often suffer from a one-sided success focus. But failures may reveal structural barriers people face.

🔗 rdcu.be/ex8hR

#BehavioralScience #PublicPolicy
July 28, 2025 at 10:38 AM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
Excited to ✨share✨ that our paper on ✨sharing✨ is published! Across 3 studies that build on one another, we show that perceived alignment with one's peers increases the likelihood of information sharing.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Perceived community alignment increases information sharing - Nature Communications
Information sharing is a ubiquitous and consequential behavior. Here, the authors use neuroimaging and behavioral studies to show that people are driven to share information that they believe will be ...
www.nature.com
July 3, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
Experimentology is out today!!! A group of us wrote a free online textbook for experimental methods, available at experimentology.io - the idea was to integrate open science into all aspects of the experimental workflow from planning to design, analysis, and writing.
July 1, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
Sharing our new paper published today in Nature Communications. In my view, this is our clearest demonstration to date that something profoundly changes in how infants encode the world around them before and after the emergence of self-representation. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The self-reference memory bias is preceded by an other-reference bias in infancy - Nature Communications
A classic feature of human memory is that we remember information better when it refers to ourselves. Here, the authors show that before the emergence of self-concept, infants instead remember informa...
www.nature.com
July 9, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
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 Bryan Hong
In our first “Postdoc perspectives” essay, @fleabrained.bsky.social and @maribel-patino.bsky.social explain how grassroots organizations led by trainees are stepping up to provide career and mentorship guidance for neuroscience students from marginalized backgrounds.

#neuroskyence

bit.ly/4csFx0B
As federal funders desert mentorship programs for marginalized students, trainee-led initiatives fill the gap
Grassroots organizations, led by graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, are stepping up to provide neuroscience career training and guidance for students from marginalized backgrounds—and…
bit.ly
April 11, 2025 at 1:26 PM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
If you're at #CNS2025 come check out our lab's Sunday line-up of posters from @catalinayang.bsky.social, @bryanhong.bsky.social, @nellymatorina.bsky.social, and @laurenhomann.bsky.social.
March 30, 2025 at 12:05 AM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
Are you doing EMA research and wonder how to go about it? In recent work we've adressed some open questions and challenges, here is a brief summary of papers and materials.

🧵 #PsychSciSky 🧪 #StatsSky
March 12, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
Thrilled to see this paper out in @naturehumbehav.bsky.social after years of work by Drs. @diamondn.bsky.social and @stefsimpson.bsky.social, with Drs. Stuart Fogel, Daniel Baena, and Brian J Murray!

@baycrestfoundation.bsky.social
March 12, 2025 at 4:49 AM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
Grateful for the chance to share my thoughts on responsible use of LLMs in psychology research @spspnews.bsky.social #spsp2025. Here's a summary of my presentation for those who missed it. Thanks to @ashwinia.bsky.social for organizing this panel!

How should LLMs be used in psychology research? 🧵
February 22, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
“I am in here!” It's a sentiment I've seen expressed time and time again from non-speaking autistic individuals who were thought to be unable to express their thoughts - but ultimately gained access to communication. Hearing this call, my research is expanding in some new directions.
January 27, 2025 at 10:33 PM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
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 Bryan Hong
A exhibition at Waterloo architecture collects memories and mementos of Toronto's Chinatown, along with scale models of restaurants, to reimagine community heritage through storytelling. spacing.ca/toronto/2025...
Chinatown Memory Collectors - Spacing Toronto
A shiny sword, a stack of red packets, old Chinese books and brochures, a wooden folding fan, a souvenir mug, and faded photos of seniors – all are carefully displayed on a large round table draped in...
spacing.ca
January 21, 2025 at 3:08 PM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
Thrilled to share our latest work on the importance of considering social identities in brain imaging research, now out in @natureneuro.bsky.social.

rdcu.be/d4XWM
December 27, 2024 at 6:58 PM
Reposted by Bryan Hong
We have a new paper explaining all the ways you can use natural language processing to analyze text data in @natrevpsych.bsky.social

We provide user friendly recommendations for using NLP to ensure rigour and reproducibility

Here is a free link: www.nature.com/articles/s44...
January 2, 2025 at 12:55 PM