Takeaway: thinking about training curriculum is important to ensure participants actually form the cognitive maps you think they are forming! Thank you to my wonderful supervisors and co-authors @summerfieldlab.bsky.social, @helencbarron.bsky.social and Zilu Liang (sadly bsky-less). [6/6]
We believe that this may be because our grouped curriculum resulted in mental fragmentation of the learned associations into different smaller maps. [Spoiler: a neuroimaging follow up is in the works]. [5/6]
Across different map shapes and groups of participants, we found that spatially disjoint training results in significantly better (or more integrated) cognitive map learning!
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Each participant learned two maps: one by taking pseudo-random walks along single rows or columns of the map at a time (grouped training) and one by learning spatially disjoint transitions within a block of training trials (disjoint training). [3/6]
How does curriculum learning influence the way cognitive maps are formed? We manipulated the order in which participants learned the one-step transitions making up maps of images and then probed how that impacted their subsequent ability to perform multi-step inference on those maps. [2/6]
Interested in cognitive maps? Wondering how you should best train your participants? Luckily for you, we have investigated just that! Very excited to share a preprint from my PhD in which we show how initial training curriculum affects the cognitive maps we form
osf.io/preprints/ps...
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** We have up to TWO funded PhD positions available in our lab!! Apply below to find new ways to enhance memory👇 Pls retweet **
Deadline: 2nd December
1. Cross-species closed-loopTMR: tinyurl.com/bddu4tp6
2. TUS and TMR in humans:
tinyurl.com/jjws5ctj
Happy to chat to interested applicants.
Are you planning to attend #CCN2025? Do you want to reflect on how to direct your skills and aptitudes to tackle today's most pressing social problems? Make sure you come to Amsterdam a day early to attend our satellite event on Science for Social Good. Register here: forms.gle/TFRCZYX2qfwD...
Feel like doing some really exciting mouse work with a fantastic PI in Oxford? Come join our lab!!
🧠✨How do we rebuild our memories? In our new study, we show that hippocampal ripples kickstart a coordinated expansion of cortical activity that helps reconstruct past experiences.
We recorded iEEG from patients during memory retrieval... and found something really cool 👇(thread)
Chris has a course on the lab website (under Teaching) that touches on a lot of the topics - maybe the readings he suggests could be helpful?
