Lexi Decker

Wow congratulations @zreagh.bsky.social !!!

Excited to share our paper (with @jzacks.bsky.social), now out in JEP:LMC!

Event boundaries sometimes disrupt temporal order memory in list-based paradigms—but what happens in narratives with more complex structures that better resemble real life?

✨ Link: psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-...

Super cool paper led by the amazing @tbiba.bsky.social suggesting that we form memories at the theta rhythm! And even cooler that these rhythms can actually be detected with careful behavioral manipulations!

Super cool paper led by the amazing Thomas Biba showing that episodic memory is theta rhythmic! And even cooler that these rhythms can actually be detected with behavioral memory data (my favorite type of data!).

Episodic memory encoding fluctuates at a theta rhythm of 3–10 Hz Nature Human Behaviour - Biba et al. show that episodic memory encoding fluctuates at a theta rhythm of 3–10 Hz.

I am excited to share my first paper, showing that episodic memory formation is theta rhythmic, is now published in Nature Human Behavior! Check it out here: rdcu.be/e6pzS. Thanks to my PI, Katherine Duncan, and to my collaborators for their support on this journey! Stay tuned for iEEG follow up 🧠

"..hippocampal-prefrontal systems represent emotion concepts in a map-like way at multiple levels of abstraction.."

Map-like representations of emotion knowledge in hippocampal-prefrontal systems
by
@yumengma.bsky.social and @pkragel.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Now out in an issue! ~~ www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Awake Infants: Insights From More Than 750 Scanning Sessions Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in awake infants has the potential to reveal how the early developing brain gives rise to cognition and behavior. However, awake infant fMRI poses signifi....

Awake infant fMRI offers a rare window into early brain and cognitive development. In a new paper out now in Infancy, we leverage data from hundreds of infant scans from the Saxe and Turk-Browne Labs to reveal what factors drive scanning success — and how future studies can maximize data retention!

Thanks to Amy Sue Finn, @duncanlabuoft.bsky.social Katherine Duncan, and other amazing collaborators for always inspiring me!

This also made me wonder about neural network models of attention and learning - would attention 'darting' early in training (rapid sequential sampling across features) produce better learning than 'diffuse' attention? Is this immature attention a feature, not a bug 🤔?

This darting pattern makes me think about explore-exploit patterns across development. Higher exploration (darting) early in training/development enabling broader learning

We also found kids were less likely than adults to learn associations between relevant and irrelevant info—their associative systems "stick" the stuff they encounter together less... keeping things more open or disparate..

Does darting attention have adaptive benefits over diffusing? Hypothetically it would allow children to retain a narrowly focused attentional scope in each moment, regardless of the content of their focus. Darting could lead to really good and broad learning when averaged across many events.

But kids' broad attention didn't always"diffuse" over everything. Instead, it appeared to "dart" between relevant and irrelevant information across time - narrowing in on one one or the other in each moment

We found that kids' immature selective attention allowed them to learn more—even stuff we explicitly told them to ignore! Their "leaky" attention mediated better memory for task-irrelevant information

a woman stands in front of a crowd on a stage with a lot of lights ALT: a woman stands in front of a crowd on a stage with a lot of lights

❗New Paper❗Is children's attention more like a spotlight that darts across time, or one that diffuses across many things at once? How might children's immature attention help their learning? Our Dev Sci Paper has answers! 🧵🎯

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41549519/

This also made me wonder about neural network models of attention and learning - would attention 'darting' early in training (rapid sequential sampling across features) produce more robust, generalizable learning than parallel 'diffuse' attention? Is this immature attention a feature, not a bug 🤔?

This darting pattern makes me think about explore-exploit patterns across development. Higher exploration (darting) early in training/development enabling broader learning

We also found kids were less likely than adults to learn associations between relevant and irrelevant info—their associative systems "stick" the stuff they encounter together less... keeping things more open or disparate..

Darting could have adaptive benefits over diffusing. It could allow children to remain laser focused some times, facilitating detailed learning of whatever it is they are prioritizing in the moment. The pattern of darting ends up looking broad when averaged across many events.

But kids' broad attention doesn't always let everything in all at once, like a "diffuse" attentional spotlight that spreads over everything. Instead, their attention often appears to "dart" between relevant and irrelevant information - narrowing in one one or the other over time.

We found that kids' bad selective attention gave them a broader curriculum for learning—they learned stuff we explicitly told them to ignore! Their "leaky" attention mediated better memory for task-irrelevant content onlinelibrary-wiley-com.libproxy.washu.edu/doi/10.1111/...

Our stellar graduate alum Dr. Alexandra Decker is looking for a Lab Manager for her lab, the Learning and Development lab@WashU! 🧠

If you are interested in attention, learning and memory in children and adults, this is the place to be.

See her posts for more details!
#Research #Psychology

Apply here!

wustl.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

Research Technician I - Social Science Scheduled Hours 37.5 Position Summary Applications are invited for a full-time research assistant position at WashU in St. Louis to work with Dr. Alexandra Decker in the Learning and Development lab. ...

wustl.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

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

You'll help build a new lab from the ground up, run cognitive experiments with kids & adults, analyze behavioral/psychophysiological data & help write papers.

Please DM me if interested and help spread the word!

🧠 Hiring a Research Assistant/Lab Manager! Share widely! 📍 St. Louis | ⏰ Full-time

We're launching the How We Learn Lab @WashU, studying attention, learning & memory interactions. Perfect for anyone interested in dev cog neuro who wants hands-on experience before grad school.

deckerlab.com

"The decision in Cycle Toronto v Ontario was a strong rebuke to government overreach when those actions put people’s lives at risk and are unsupported by facts and data. We look forward to defending that victory in court on Jan. 28.”

Thanks to @shawnballard.bsky.social for this terrific synopsis of our latest work in @cellpress.bsky.social. The details of how stimulant medications like Ritalin work inside the brain will surprise you! doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...