We're thrilled to welcome Dr. @zachtpennington.bsky.social and Dr. @milanium.bsky.social as Assistant Professors in our Behavioural Neuroscience area and members of the @dmcbrainhealth.bsky.social. Read their Q&As: psych.ubc.ca/news

What episodic memory reveals about the default mode network osf.io/preprints/ps...

Hot take: The doctor shouldn't be the one asking if it's ok if she uses AI to take patient notes. The power differential + patient anxiety + short appointment times means the patient feels pressure to say yes. It should be a question asked during check-in. (I wish it wasn't used at all, but...)

Congratulations! Nice to see the first paper from the BreDAD Collaboratory’s Special Issue of @neurobiology-aging.bsky.social out! 🎊

I was recently promoted to Associate Professor. I’m so grateful and I also wanted to tell the truth behind what people call “effortless” success. I wrote about infertility, fostering, work as coping, and choosing differently in this next chapter Full story: destenienock5.wixsite.com/destenienock...

We were told (by some) not to tell anyone in academia about family planning, pregnancy, or juggling kids w/ work. Or else say bye to your career. Thankfully, this was not my experience with my supervisors (or hiring committees), though I did witness it elsewhere. Let's keep pushing change!

On #IDWGS, we honour Dr. Kirsty Duncan, a scientist, leader, and lifelong advocate for fairness and representation in research. Her work helped create lasting change in Canadian science, opening doors for women and underrepresented scholars. Her impact continues.

RSVP here: quinn.psych.ubc.ca/quinn-memori...

2–3 cups of coffee or 1–2 cups of tea a day was associated with the greatest reductions in rate of cognitive decline. Coffee linked to slower brain ageing in study of 130,000 people www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Valentine's Day is coming up😍 Do you have a funny neuroscience-themed pickup line? Share it below! A selection of responses may be featured as illustrations on our Instagram. Bonus points for creativity!

An amazing effort, led by a dream team of scientists, including the late Ricardo Insausti. Congrats to Ana Daugherty and everyone involved. (Was honoured to play a very small role.) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Knowing that there are people actively working toward a better and more peaceful world gives me hope. This Friday, you can hear from some folks who have been carefully thinking about ways in which behavioral and neural sciences can contribute to peace building. www.neuropaz.com/en

Why do some experiences stay with us for years, while others disappear almost instantly? Dr. Davachi will explore this question and more in her talk on 'The wisdom of the unconscious mind: offline reactivation consolidates, integrates and updates knowledge.'

We’re proud to support a National Framework for Women’s Health through Bill S-243 by partnering with @whcwomenshealth.bsky.social, organizations across Canada and Senator Henkel. The time for change is now 💪 Learn more and take action: thewhc.ca/whframework womenshealthresearchcluster.com/advocacy

So fun to be a part of this.

Infantile #amnesia limits our recall of early-life memories, but what is its cellular basis? @tjryan.bsky.social &co reveal that transient #microglial activity during postnatal development regulates infant #memory persistence & retrieval in mice @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4a0SoGH

This amazing woman worked so hard for science and sport in Canada. She set up the Standing Committee on Science and Research, was a powerful voice for science in parliament and after being diagnosed with two cancers continued to advocate for good. Proud to have known the Rt Hon Kirsty Duncan. RIP 💔

Minister Duncan was an inspiration for so many of us, and often a lone voice in Parliament advocating for the need for supporting science in Canada! May her memory be a blessing!

I was maybe 2.5 years into my position as an Assistant Professor when my phone rang, and it was Kirsty Duncan, the new federal science minister, calling out of the blue. I had never met her. She asked me what she could do for early career investigators. /1

Sad news. She was very much a solo voice in cabinet for science. Even agter she was bumped, she continued to be a voice for the scientific community. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

One of my amazing students, Khushi Sharma, has started this gofundme page for her best friend's family. Saadia, a single mother, has stage 4 cancer and her family needs help to manage expenses. Funds will give this family more precious time together. www.gofundme.com/f/support-fo...

Very pleased to see our review published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience today! Here’s the link: trebuchet.public.springernature.app/get_content/...

Our experiences have countless details, and it can be hard to know which matter. How can we behave effectively in the future when, right now, we don't know what we'll need? Out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com , @marcelomattar.bsky.social and I find that people solve this by using episodic memory.

If you're joining @cnsmtg.bsky.social in Vancouver, consider coming one day early and joining the International Sleep Replay Workshop. Even if you're only remotely interested in sleep, you're likely to find this event interesting. Check out the program and share with your friends and colleagues!

What does it mean to be conscious? And how can we communicate with people who can’t easily communicate with us? Meet Dr. Stefanie Blain-Moraes, whose research bridges engineering, neuroscience and rehab to better understand consciousness, personhood and recovery after brain injury.

Why do some experiences stay with us for years, while others disappear almost instantly? Join us and Dr. Lila Davachi at the 2026 Quinn Memorial Lecture on March 10 to find out! RSVP: quinn.psych.ubc.ca/quinn-memori...

Writing is thinking Outsourcing the entire task of writing to LLMs will deprive us of the essential creative task of interpreting our findings and generating a deeper theoretical understanding of the world.

🚨New Paper Alert!🚨 Now out in Emotion! The Memory Palace Architect: Effect of Valence on Loci-Dependent Recall Performance. We ask a simple question: does the emotional tone of a memory palace matter for recall? Turns out: yes—and negative palaces work best.

Research shows that emotional memories are more vivid & long-lasting than non-emotional ones. @dmcbrainhealth.bsky.social researcher Dr. Daniela Palombo shares the scientific insights behind the Inside Out movies:

Can reward improve memory for what came before it? 🌟 In a registered report with @duncanlabuoft.bsky.social & @megschlichting.bsky.social, we reconcile mixed findings from past studies: reward retroactively boosts associative—but not item—memory, and only in reward-sensitive individuals!

Fresh off the press from all-star post-doc Blake Elliott: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... We show that the HPC supports coincidence detection across VTA and lPFC in service of novelty-evoked invigoration. Stay-tuned for how these circuits are altered in psychosis risk.

Is one of your New Year's Resolutions to become calmer and more mindful? Join us on Jan 23 at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre and meditate beneath the stars. This wellness-focused evening combines a visually soothing planetarium experience with a meaningful discussion on mindfulness and resilience.

Excited to share our new publication on fMRI-derived anatomical and functional patterns linked to attentional control deficits in individuals with schizophrenia: doi.org/10.1016/j.ps... Huge thanks Todd Woodward @twoodward.bsky.social, Paul Metzak, Madeleine Evora, Aida Momeni, and Helen Hsiao!

New paper from the IMC lab! I am very excited about this one. For years, I have been arguing that one of the main claims of the so-called "simulation heuristic" is likely not true for episodic counterfactual thinking, namely that the harder it is to mentally simulate it, the less plausible (1/n)

Yes!

Welcome to Vancouver and UBC! We’re excited to have you @milanium.bsky.social!

Sleep colleagues, please submit tonight to be considered for a short talk.

New lab paper: "Emotional learning selectively distorts the temporal organization of memory: A quantitative synthesis." Across 17 different studies, fear conditioning consistently distorted temporal source memory for information encoded before and after. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Australia just recorded zero cervical cancer cases in women under 25 for the first time since records began in 1982. The amazing result of HPV vaccination.

We're thrilled to announce the publication of our newest paper in @plosone.org 🎉 "Aging and episodic memory specificity: Evidence challenging a domain-general pattern separation decline" Read Dr. Youm's full paper here: doi.org/10.1371/jour... @melaniecohn.bsky.social #Memory #Psychology #Aging

Aligning eye tracking and free recall time series, we found that increased saccades predict episodic (vs. non-episodic) by 0.5 s. Just out in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social, led by Ryan Barker with the inimitable @drjenryan.bsky.social. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Suparna Rajaram from Stony Brook University, USA, inspired attendees with her Keynote Address, “The Cognition of Social Remembering: Implications for Individual and Collective Memory,” during last night's Opening Session. #psynom25

How do changes in context influence how we organize our memories in time? Faster contextual changes are associated with faster drift in hippocampal activity and reduced temporal clustering in recalled memories. Elegant work led by @lindsayrait.bsky.social! www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...

We’re hiring a Research Assistant! Join the Brain Resilience Study team and support a major INN project on brain health and aging. If you're passionate about collaborative team science and multimodal data collection, submit your application to [email protected] by Nov 28th. Learn more: shorturl.at/QMFV0

How do hormones affect the brain and our behaviours, and what does that mean for Canadians? 🧠 Hear from @kiransoma.bsky.social, who was recently elected as a Fellow to the Royal Society of Canada. @psych.ubc.ca @src-rsc.bsky.social Read more: www.arts.ubc.ca/news/two-art...

new paper by Sean Westwood: With current technology, it is impossible to tell whether survey respondents are real or bots. Among other things, makes it easy for bad actors to manipulate outcomes. No good news here for the future of online-based survey research

Very excited to be heading to Denver in a couple of days for Psychonomics! If you are interested in how memory affects time, come chat with me at Poster 067 during Poster Session 2 #psynom25

Registration is open. Please spread the word. The preliminary schedule will be up on the site later this month, and we've got an amazing line up!

#CNS2026 | Satellite - International Sleep Replay Workshop Friday, March 6, 2026, 8:00 am - 6:00 pm, Salon F The workshop is open to all: experience with sleep research is not required. Register here: isrw.bio.uci.edu Registration Deadline, February 15th @cogneuronews.bsky.social #SleepRelay

From campfire to cortex: storytelling as shared cognition - Stories as an evolved cognitive technology www.brainpizza.com/p/from-campf... #dublin #dbf #stories #cognition #norm #culture #psychscisky #neuroskyence