If you are at #CNS2026 and are interested in hierarchical structures in event segmentation and "neural state segmentation," come and chat with me at poster A111 this afternoon from 3-5pm :)
Poster Session A #111: "Neural State Segmentation in Naturalistic Goal-directed Activities" 🧠🎞️
I’m pleased to share that I’ve been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. Lots of feelings that words can’t really do much to unpack, but to quote a probably obscure song I’m fond of: “I love you all, and thank you.” (The next line is “I can’t do this alone,” which is accurate.)
Check out this *incredibly* cool work led by Adi and June Kim. Also, never a bad time to do science with @jzacks.bsky.social and @alexbarnett.bsky.social 🥳
Explain to Congress how important it is to keep multiyear funding of NIH grants in the funding bill.
This protects against Russell Vought's trick, which is to make this year's NIH budget cover multiple years of research in advance.
Tell your Congresscritter. US Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121.
My lab is recruiting a postdoc and a full-time research technician to work on an NIH-funded project studying age-related changes in memory for naturalistic events. Behavior, fMRI, and blood-based biomarkers. 3+ years funding guaranteed.
Postdoc: tinyurl.com/ykjfbnj8
Tech: tinyurl.com/2f2hw3f5
Prohibiting academics and researchers from associating with, in some cases, the premier organizations in their field is counter to the core mission of a university. This *needs* to see resounding pushback. Otherwise, what are we even doing here?
fabbs.org/news/2026/01...
Validity of the observation notwithstanding, it is incredibly frustrating to see the current moment assessed in terms of branding. People could lose their access to healthcare and food. That’s a lot more important than your “brand.”
Your jam reviews are a reliable source of dopamine. Please do it for the fans.
Also, I tried a jam calendar last year and I really struggled to keep going after about 10 straight days of jam. Respect.
The Toronto Blue Jays have the opportunity to do the funniest thing to the United States in 2025, and I am 100% here for it.
I would obviously prefer a resounding “no” in favor of sticking to our principles, but I suppose it is worth acknowledging that a university such as ours - located in a place subject to deeply conservative politics - is not in the easiest position one could imagine. In the end, I’ll take it.
Traveling from the US to Canada for a conference next week, and Air Canada just emailed me warning me how risky it is to be in the United States right now 🫡
If you're interested in the cognitive neuroscience of memory feel free to email me!
I do experimental psychology, brain imaging (fMRI and MEG) and a bit of modelling. Lab is doing stuff on forgetting, aging, schemas, and event boundaries, but we're not limited to that.
#psychscisky #neuroskyence
Hey, only good non-motiony vibes from me! Another day, another frontal or cerebellar blob randomly going “bonjour”
Can we talk about the dorsal frontal situation?
Should I start telling students to get degrees in AI instead of cognitive neuroscience? Asking for a field.
🌟 Excited to share that I'm recruiting PhD students in Psychology for my new lab at Rice University this cycle (Signal boost appreciated!)
To learn more, check out the Learning & Behavior Change Lab website:
www.sinclairlab-rice.com
Applications are due Dec 1st: psychology.rice.edu/graduate/pro...
Another new-ish paper: Events in the stream of behavior
Maverick Smith, @jzacks.bsky.social, and I discuss how the brain (esp. the Default Mode Network) represents event models, leveraging different information domains and scales of information processing.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
“I’m a behind” 😂
Well, in all fairness, I truly am.
Next up, from @atabk.bsky.social and @wouterkool.bsky.social: Free recall is shaped by inference and scaffolded by event structure. In sum, Ata stuck hidden (and shifting) rules into a word list learning task, creating "events" that influenced the structure of recall.
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
I'm a behind on shouting out new papers!
From Angelique Delarazan: Narrative Coherence Warps the Timeline of Recalled Naturalistic Events. In sum, when recalling stories, people systematically deviate from temporal organization to follow the narrative threads.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
Check out a new preprint from Adi, postdoc working with me and Jeff Zacks. I’m *extremely* excited to finally, officially get this out into the world 🙂
I just got NOAs on an NSF grant and an R01 in the same week, and I cannot begin to put into words the bizarre combination of relief, exhaustion, elation, and survivor’s guilt I am currently feeling.
What a fun and surreal day. Huge congrats to @atabk.bsky.social for defending his dissertation. I couldn’t be more proud ❤️
I’m just sitting here looking at the list of grant applications I had planned to work on this summer, and struggling to avoid the conclusion that it will be a huge waste of time.
Thanks for the kind words 🙂 I do want to interject some levity and clarify that, despite what she’d want you to believe, she was a deeply weird and unserious creature. And although the bar for dachshunds is pretty low in this regard, she was *so* smart. It was occasionally a problem.
You might have seen this pup in some of my papers and presentations. This is Maddie, and she was my best friend in the whole world. We had 16 wonderful years together. This past week has been incredibly hard, but it’s helped me refocus on what really matters amidst all the chaos in the world.
Much needed physical punishment and mental replenishment. Druid Arch in Canyonlands National Park.
My lab is full of deeply unserious people, and I love them
Speaking of the task, Ata’s nickname for it is “Wordsconsin” 😂
Check out our new study by @atabk.bsky.social! He tweaked a word list memory task to have hidden rules at encoding, which shifted and created “event boundaries.” People recalled pre-boundary words more, and post-boundary words less. Other fun bits in the paper include a reinforcement learning model!
