Our experience of time is powerfully shaped by boundaries between events (i.e., going from one meeting to the next). But what about time *within an event*? In new work, we find reliable distortions of time based on internal event structure (e.g., beginnings, middles, and ends)! tinyurl.com/n8mn2sn7

Stress drives the hippocampus to prioritize statistical prediction over episodic encoding https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.25.683838v1

THE MUNCY MASH IT WAS A #WORLDSERIES SMASH

The MAC lab at Drexel is looking for a new post-doc to work on NIH-funded projects investigating the intersection of prior knowledge and long-term memory consolidation. Please pass along to any interested lab members! careers.drexel.edu/cw/en-us/job...

Last month, I launched my lab at Ohio State. Our lab website is now live, and we're recruiting graduate students this cycle! If you're interested in the cognitive (neuro)science of learning & memory, please reach out! www.momentslab.org

How does spontaneous memory reinstatement at rest relate to episodic memory during development? And how do early experiences influence neural mechanisms of episodic memory encoding and reinstatement? New preprint! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I am recruiting graduate students for Fall 2026 through both the cognitive and developmental areas at Ohio State. If you are interested in spatial cognition, visual perception, and/or mental representation -- please reach out! I'd love to hear from you. www.cogdevlab.org

Very excited to have @brynnsherman.bsky.social join us for the next @timingresforum.bsky.social Virtual Journal Club! Please join us for what should be a very interesting talk on her recent work! Sign-up details below: mailchi.mp/28692b147cb0...

For >5 years, the International Sleep Replay Workshops (ISRW) have brought together scientists studying sleep & memory. The next ISRW will be on March 6th in Vancouver (before @cogneuronews.bsky.social). Follow the link for details and to join the mailing list. isrw.bio.uci.edu Pls repost! #sleep

Visual adaptation is viewed as a test of whether a feature is represented by the visual system. In a new paper, Sam Clarke and I push the limits of this test. We show spatially selective, putatively "visual" adaptation to a clearly non-visual dimension: Value! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Happy to have this work out! Using cryo-EM and electrophysiology, we clarify the mechanism of a small molecule inhibitor of CFTR that could have some important clinical applications. rdcu.be/eyVyq

I'm recruiting a lab manager for my soon-to-be-launched lab at Ohio State! If you know of any recent grads who may be interested both in helping to build the lab and in developing skills in the cognitive neuroscience of memory, please share! osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/OSUCar...

This was so fun to write! Grateful to ICIS and the Baby Blog for the space to reflect on infant memory

In the latest #UndertheCortex, @brynnsherman.bsky.social from @upenn.edu shares that repeated experiences are more vividly remembered and are often perceived as having occurred further in the past than they did.

There’s something funny about saying that someone caused something to happen when they didn’t act intentionally — as if that phrasing assigns unintended agency to them. Why is that? In this new paper below, we take a linguistic approach to answering this question. Lots of interesting data here!

Excited to share a new preprint w/ @annaschapiro.bsky.social! Why are there gradients of plasticity and sparsity along the neocortex–hippocampus hierarchy? We show that brain-like organization of these properties emerges in ANNs that meta-learn layer-wise plasticity and sparsity. bit.ly/4kB1yg5

Super excited to share this one!! Meta-learning sparsity and learning rate gives rise to brain-like gradients of complementary learning systems. So complementary learning systems emerge organically through behavior optimization, and it's not just two of them!!

I am excited to announce my first ever paper (w/ @samiyousif.bsky.social ) about a new illusion of *number*: the “Crowd Size Illusion”. osf.io/preprints/ps...

I have noticed that many cool people are starting labs at Ohio State right now. I've decided to follow their lead. Soon, my lab will be moving to Ohio State as well. You can learn more about our recent and upcoming work here: www.cogdevlab.org

Incredibly excited and grateful to share that I’ll be starting a lab at The Ohio State University this(!) fall! My lab will study human learning and memory, with related interests in sleep, stress, and time perception. More info soon, but do get in touch if you’re interested in joining!

New preprint! How do we integrate new information into prior knowledge? We find that existing knowledge enables rapid new learning but that interleaved replay during sleep promotes integration of new and old information. Modeling suggests a sleep context suppression mechanism. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Now officially out! psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-... (Free version here: talboger.github.io/files/Boger_...)

So excited to share our new preprint! We used behavior & pupillometry to examine how reinterpreting negative emotions shapes memory for emotionally charged events. Huge thanks to my spectacular advisor, Dave, for all his help and support with my first project of grad school! Check it out 👇

New preprint! Statistical structure skews object memory toward predictable successors. Model simulations show how this bias can arise from the backward expansion of hippocampal representations. w/co-first @codydong.bsky.social , @marlietandoc.bsky.social & @annaschapiro.bsky.social osf.io/yuxb6_v1

So excited to share my *first* first-author paper, out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social!! In this review, we argue that even if you don’t remember being a baby, evidence that infants form episodic-like memories is actually all around us: authors.elsevier.com/c/1l82g4sIRv...

New from our lab: your brain doesn’t just remember time - it bends it. We show that the dopamine system responds to natural breakpoints in experience, and this relates to more stretched memories of time. Blinking also increases, signaling encoding of new memories. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I am very excited to be presenting my work with @samiyousif.bsky.social at #VSS2025 tomorrow! I will be talking about a new illusion of number perception that we call the “Crowd Size Illusion”!

We were blown away by the public response to our findings that the infant brain can store memories. Many people wrote to share with us their first memories. To help us capture these reports, we created a short, anonymous survey. We hope you might also consider taking it. Please share with others! 🧠🧪

Now officially out in @psychscience.bsky.social ! journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... @samiyousif.bsky.social

Sam Clarke and I have been writing a lot about adaptation -- what it is, what it isn't, what it reveals about perception. We've just released a preprint that pushes the boundaries of adaptation even further. We document spatially selective adaptation to arbitrary *value*. philpapers.org/rec/CLACWS

Come find us at CNS!! Sunday 10am Symposium: Cognitive Functions of Replay Sunday 5pm posters: C136 @paigesev.bsky.social, C156 @marlietandoc.bsky.social, C162 @sarahsolomon.bsky.social

Baby hippocampi can support episodic memories! Beautiful work from @tristansyates.bsky.social

Why do we not remember being a baby? One idea is that the hippocampus, which is essential for episodic memory in adults, is too immature to form individual memories in infancy. We tested this using awake infant fMRI, new in @science.org #ScienceResearch www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I'm really, really excited about our recent paper on children's understanding of topological spatial relations (w/ Lily Goldstein and Liz Brannon). I've linked the paper here, but I'll summarize the thread below. direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

Last year, I was overjoyed to receive an NIH NRSA fellowship to study toddler brains and caregiving effects on memory at Columbia. Last night, my grant was terminated.

Our memories are not encoded with timestamps. How do we reconstruct the passage of time from our memories? In a new paper (accepted at Psych Science) @samiyousif.bsky.social and I demonstrate a powerful illusion of time that results from repeated experience osf.io/preprints/ps...

New paper published in Psych. Science on the perception of *topological relations*. In it, we explore how subtle differences in topological structure influence attention, perception, and even enumeration. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I want to draw attention to a special issue that Lila Davachi and I put together to memorialize our friend and colleague Sarah DuBrow. It’s full of papers inspired by her work and her being from a group of collaborators, friends, and fans! Thanks @bradpostle.bsky.social for helping make this happen.

Excited our new paper is out now in PNAS with @vpmurty.bsky.social & @benrottman.bsky.social! We found that the benefits of the spacing effect on item and associative memory depend on the variability in the content and the timescale of the spacing intervals. Read more: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We are recruiting a full-time research assistant to begin this summer! Please apply / share with anyone who may be interested! wd1.myworkdaysite.com/recruiting/u...

New preprint! We use real-time TMR to show that sleep reactivation transforms object memories, enhancing certain features at the expense of others. W/ Sindhuja Uppuluri, Jianing Mu, @marlietandoc.bsky.social @jameswardantony.bsky.social @annaschapiro.bsky.social doi.org/10.1101/2023.12.14.571683

So excited that this is out now! Our model of how the different pathways of the hippocampus contribute to category learning, led by Jelena Sučević! elifesciences.org/articles/77185

New preprint! We show that category structure rapidly warps memory for individual object features according to their roles in the category. Features shared across exemplars pull together while unique features stay apart. With @annaschapiro.bsky.social and Cody Dong. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

If you're still around SfN this morning, I'll be presenting brand new, ongoing work on how sleep promotes the integration of new & existing memories. I'm very excited about where this work is headed, and would love to get thoughts & feedback!

I’m at #SfN23 with some *brand new* infant movie-watching fMRI data! We ask: Does the developing visual system “prefer” more realistic stimuli, or simplified/exaggerated information? How does this impact decoding of (lion) faces? Come by SS9 tomorrow (Tuesday) from 1-5pm! 🦁👑

If you're at SfN and interested in memory reactivation during sleep, come check out my talk on Sunday morning! (8:45am, WCC 150) Part of an awesome nanosymposium on learning and memory led by @emilycowan.bsky.social #SfN23 #neuroskyence

Going to SfN? Come hear my talk during what is sure to be an excellent nanosymposium on "Learning and Memory" Sunday morning 8-11am! WCC 150, NANO19  #SfN2023

The lab has three SfN presentations to check out this year!!  Sun 8:45am WCC 150 nanosymposium @lizsiefert.bsky.social Tues 2:30pm WCC 144 nanosymposium Zhenglong Zhou Wed 8am TT13 poster @brynnsherman.bsky.social I am planning to be in DC myself Tues-Wed, so hope to see you there! #neuroskyence

Stress tends to enhance memory for emotional events. Yet stress is also thought to hurt the hippocampus (which supports episodic memory). With @evgoldfarb.bsky.social & others, we explore this paradox and demonstrate how cortisol can *enhance* hippocampal function to support emotional episodic mems!