Love seeing photos of my lab presenting at conferences. ESPECIALLY love photos of lab members who are co-presenting. Yay teamwork! 😊
Check out the poster by @CraigPoskanzer & @RaheemaJavid. Preprint below and modeling work in progress 👀
osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/us…
Excited to share this project! Across 3 experiments, we find consistent evidence that encoding and prediction are coupled-- not competitive. See our preprint or come to my poster at SFN (PSTR305.12) to see some follow-up modeling work!
Does encoding the present compete with predicting the future?
In 3 behavioral studies, we find that encoding and prediction are coupled, not competitive!
Proud of @CraigPoskanzer & @hannahtstoll for leading this work w/ Raheema Javid & Edoardo Spolaore!
osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/us…
Are you interested in memory, attention, and prediction? Well, we have data for you!
Come check out our talks and posters @CNSmtg!
If you're not going to the meeting, don't worry – we'll upload our posters to our website soon after. Hope to see you at #CNS2024!
ALT Sunday April 14:
Symposium (1:30-3:30pm): Hippocampal predictions link perception and memory
Mariam Aly (talk #3), featuring work by Eren Günseli and Serra Favila:
Hippocampal memories enable preparation for anticipated attentional goals
Sunday April 14:
Poster Session C (5:00-7:00pm):
Craig Poskanzer, Hannah Tarder-Stoll, Raheema Javid, & Mariam Aly
[C2] Do encoding and prediction compete or cooperate?
Hannah Tarder-Stoll, Christopher Baldassano*, Mariam Aly*
[C13] Flexible updating of hippocampal representations guides multi-step prediction
Monday April 15:
Poster Session D (8:00-10:00am):
Cheyenne Wakeland-Hart and Mariam Aly
[D62] Predicting image memorability from evoked feelings
Many people enjoy trivia, but some people are way better at it than the rest of us. What is different about their memory?
Our research (w/ @monica_too_ & @_laurenwilkins_) characterizing the memories of trivia experts is now out and featured in @sciam!
scientificamerican.com/artic…
What makes some people better at trivia than others?
in one of the most insane multi-year "research is mesearch" journeys ever, we (me @_laurenwilkins_@mariam_s_aly ) ran a study to answer this very question! psyarxiv.com/fm82b/ check it out!! 1/ 🧵
Writing this cover story was in many ways a dream come true. Unfortunately, it will also be the last piece I write as a staff writer at TIME—I’m being laid off.
If anyone has jobs, gigs, stories, etc, please reach out at alejandrosdelagarza@gmail.com
ti.me/49mSF4P
1/3 When I see an image, I can’t tell how memorable it will be, but I CAN pick up on the feelings that it evokes. Can the feelings evoked by an image help me predict its memorability? osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/gr…
Hippocampal differentiation of competing memories predicts the precision of memory-guided eye movements and the precision of preparatory coding in visual cortex during memory-guided attention.
Excited to share this work by the inimitable Serra Favila!
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
Thrilled to share my first paper from grad school! Thanks so much to @mariam_s_aly and to the everyone from the Aly Lab for all the help along the way!
How do we balance paying attention to the external world vs our internal thoughts?
The basal forebrain & dorsal attention network dynamically interact with the hippocampus to balance external and internal attention.
Super proud of @CraigPoskanzer! 😊
jneurosci.org/content/early/…
My lab @UCRiverside is recruiting for a lab manager! We use EEG fMRI to study human memory in younger and older adults. Fab opportunity for someone thinking about grad school in the future. I’ll begin reviewing apps starting 5/1 so get ‘em in now: bit.ly/dzlabmgr
Going to #CNS2023? My lab has posters spanning visual attention, preparatory coding, episodic memory, & semantic memory — there's something for everyone!
Check out our posters, conveniently located next to each other on Sunday!
Excited to announce that our paper is out in the Journal of Neuroscience @SfNJournals! With @A_Aglinskas, @Yichen74893764, and @steanze, we identified the angular gyrus as a multi-category dependence (MCD) site that jointly encodes information from different object categories.
Attention waxes and wanes. How do these fluctuations influence memory?
Worse attentional states lead to more errors in the moment — but memory is just as temporally structured later on!
Excited to share work led by @manasijkumar w/ @chinmayi_balusu!
authors.elsevier.com/c/1gilY…
ALT Figure showing a) the procedure for identifying "in the zone" and "out of the zone" attentional states; b) "out of the zone" attentional states are associated with more task errors than "in the zone" states; and c) "in the zone" attentional states are associated with better subsequent recall than "out of the zone" states.
ALT Figure showing that "in the zone" and "out of the zone" attentional states lead to memories that are similarly structured in time.
Mariam Aly @mariam_s_aly and I are looking for a full-time RA to work on a newly-funded joint NIH grant!
If you have (or will soon have) a Bachelor's in psych, neuro, or a related field and are interested in cog neuro research on memory / prediction, see: tinyurl.com/alyssano
Interested in memory and prediction? Want training for a career in science?
@ChrisBaldassano and I are recruiting a jointly supervised research assistant to work on NIH-funded projects examining anticipatory signals in the brain!
See ad for details: tinyurl.com/alyssano
ALT Advertisement for a Research Assistant Position in the Alyssano Group at Columbia University. The ad also includes their logo of a blue/orange brain with seahorses. Text: A full-time research assistant / lab manager position is available starting Summer 2023 with the Alyssano Group in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University. The position will be jointly advised by Dr. Mariam Aly (https://www.alylab.org/) and Dr. Christopher Baldassano (https://www.dpmlab.org/). This is a one-year position with the strong expectation of renewal for a second year and the possibility of further renewals. The position entails administrative and research responsibilities and will provide excellent training for individuals who are considering a career in science.
More details here: https://tinyurl.com/alyssano
Excited to have our paper (mdpi.com/2076-3425/13/2/296) in @BrainSci_MDPI. Recent imaging studies suggest face identity and expression information are encoded in common brain regions. With @katieoneuro @rebecca_saxe & @steanze, we offer a computational hypothesis for this phenomenon.
Excited to have our opinion paper (frontiersin.org/articles/10.…) in @FrontNeurosci. With @CraigPoskanzer and @steanze, we discussed the potential of new multivariate methods for functional connectivity as well as the puzzle of nonlinear interactions between brain regions.
Mariam @mariam_s_aly discusses the many faces of the hippocampus, and how memory and attention and perception shape each other.
We also talk about the mental health challenges she faced during graduate school. I'm grateful she shared her story.
braininspired.co/podcast/156…
How do we balance paying attention to the external world vs internal thoughts?
Hippocampus shows differential coupling with basal forebrain & dorsal attention network for externally cued vs memory-guided attention
Proud of @CraigPoskanzer for this work!
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
Thrilled to share my work with @steanze. Connectivity between brain regions can transform information nonlinearly - in this paper we propose and validate a novel method to 1) identify nonlinear interactions and 2) distinguish between different kinds of nonlinear interactions.
Network Neuroscience (2022) 6 (4): 1296–1315.
Functional coordinates: Modeling interactions between brain regions as points in a function space.
direct.mit.edu/netn/article/…
by @CraigPoskanzer & @steanze
5. Understanding nonlinearities in neural interactions is an important topic in computational neuroscience. We hope that our method can be a useful tool in this effort!