Can reading a book make you a better person? Reading books is declining. But people who read weekly book excerpts & podcasts instead of meditating had the greatest reductions in aggression and growth in compassionate love, positive attitudes & altruism www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/can-readin...

Invitation to a potential replication project. rolfzwaan.substack.com/p/memory-mis...

A review just in time for our 59th Wedding Anniversary on 1st September Scenes from a Marriage: How We Found Our Way from Experimental Psychology to Social Neuroscience | Annual Reviews - www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

THIS

Very sad to hear this news. The Creative Mind one of the books that inspired me to study cognition and the brain. Lucky to meet Maggie a couple of times years later, emphasised value of conversations across disciplines. Didn’t understand everything, but learned a lot!

The Cambridge Alumni Magazine wanted to find out what a few MemLab researchers are up to. Read about Martha McGill, Will Duckett and Julia Maybury and their fascinating research in this article from the latest issue.

Could Cambridge be your next career move? Hear what attracted three international academics to come to Cambridge, and explore 150+ vacancies on our new look website at cam.ac.uk/jobs #HEjobs #Careers #UniJobs #AcademicJobs #ResearchJobs #PhDChat #Hiring #UniversityJobs #Careers

Happy birthday Brenda Milner! 🧠🎉 Today is her 107th birthday, she's a legend, a superhero.

I'm proud that @cambridgebiosci.bsky.social is leading the way in advancing our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of women's biology, which is essential to improving lifelong health and supporting intergenerational health outcomes

So very sorry to hear this news. Simon was a regular contributor to our Subjective Experience of Remembering workshops, and was always so warm and supportive and full of interesting things to say. I'm very sorry to think that our paths won't cross again. Sincere condolences to all who knew him.

I am recruiting a postgraduate research assistant to work in the Cambridge Memory Lab, administering cognitive tasks and helping with lab administration. Would suit someone who's just finished their degree and wants to gain research experience before further study. Please apply!

8th June 2020 The summer of 2020 saw the stunning installation of King’s College’s Back Lawn of a wildflower meadow. The conversion of the previously manicured lawn, dating back to 1722, has boosted biodiversity as well as being a glorious sight. Picture from my book 'Cambridge - Time & Space'.

URGENT: FlyBase has lost practically all its funding overnight; even user fees are tied up in denied grant funding. 🤬🤯 Any lab using @flybase.bsky.social please donate using the link in post below. This incredible community, on whose backs our #Drosophila labs depend, can't be left out to dry.

Episodic remembering comes with a complex phenomenology. How can we account for it? Which methodology is best suited to study it? Today, Francesca Righetti (Ruhr University Bochum) shares some very interesting ideas about these questions. open.substack.com/pub/thememor...

For anyone in the memory field, an incredible summary and tribute to Endel Tulving from Gus Craik. Read it for the writing alone. royalsocietypublishing.org/action/oidcS...

Difficult to get independent figures, but a London Economics report (for #UniversitiesUK) summarised economic impact of universities in the UK as: 768,000 jobs £71bn gross value added £116bn general economic output @houseoflords.parliament.uk summary: lordslibrary.parliament.uk/higher-educa...

The list of candidates for the position of Chancellor of the University of Cambridge has now been finalised. Candidate statements are available on the website. The person elected will be the University's formal and ceremonial head, a key role. Voting will take place in July. Please vote if eligible!

We all stand on the shoulders of giants, and I'm very aware of how fortunate I am to follow in the footsteps of so many @cambridgeuni.bsky.social researchers who made fundamental contributions to our understanding of memory

1/2 Just like social groups, human memory is organized in interconnected patterns. Activating one memory can trigger related ones, similar to how information spreads through a community. Could social sharing shape how memories are formed? #PsychSciSky

Please share; My lab at @psychologyuea.bsky.social @uniofeastanglia.bsky.social is recruiting a post-doc for a cognitive neuroscience memory project. It is a 3-year post, with a proposed start date of 8th September. Application deadline is 15th of June. vacancies.uea.ac.uk/vacancies/15...

Decades of research suggest that authoritarian leaders and their admirers consistently share one thing in common: they twist the truth! Our OP-ED in @time.com today about how to fight harmful misinformation! And the need to speak out against it. More speech, not less! 💪 time.com/7282640/how-...

This is, like all of @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social's work, simply wonderul.

Or to put it another way, overseas students now subsidise the cost of teaching each UK undergraduate by an average of £2,500 each. Take them away and you've got an absolutely existential crisis for universities. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/pol...

Listened to the first two episodes of @catherineloveday.bsky.social's new podcast while rowing this morning. It's insightful, warm, moving and informative, with practical tips to help families of people with memory loss. If you're in this situation, or might one day be, it's well worth a listen.

It’s here...The light is rising. The birds are too. Wherever you are... take a moment. Pause. Listen. You’re part of the dawn chorus. Record it. Share it. What do you hear? Let’s fill this thread with birdsong. 🍃🎵 #InternationalDawnChorusDay

Doing a fun study on people's guesses – like how many litres of air do people breathe in a day? No googling! Just your first guess! There's 6 topics ~20 questions each. You’ll get to see the answers at the end! research.sc/participant/... We'd love a big sample – feel free to share!

This is the kind of science I can get behind

💷🇬🇧Has randomisation made the British Academy's (@britishacademy.bsky.social) grants more attractive by ensuring equal chances and removing bias? Read here 👉 ow.ly/ZrAt50VIJSK #Research #Grants #Funding #Randomisation

My article in The Times today Exam stress: how to understand your child’s brain www.thetimes.com/article/fdbc...

The easter break means I didn't get around to publicising Martha McGill's excellent blog summarising the 2nd meeting of our interdisciplinary Memory Club. This time, we focused on dream memories, reality monitoring and literary representations of vivid memories www.english.cam.ac.uk/research/mem...

Universities matter at least as much as much as steel. Invest in minds as well as materials. This it’s a sector we really can lead in globally, especially given the US car crash. But it means welcoming international students and removing bizarrely punitive visas

A clean sweep across all 6 races. Well done all at @cambridgeuni.bsky.social boat club!

The UK car industry contributes £22bn to the economy and employs c 35k people. Universities contribute £265bn and employ nearly 400k, over 10x as much. Yet he seems ok to let that sector implode.

"If there is a time and a place for stubborn resistance, there is also a time and a place to plant iris." on.ft.com/3EiP5P5

Apologies to followers outside the UK; today is the first day of the county cricket season. This is David Inshaw's 'The Cricket Game,' a painting which evokes soft, early evening light and the fullness of high summer.

Ridiculous that highlighting the need for better evidence about smartphone bans can bring accusations of bias. As Amy says in the article, her role is to examine the evidence, not to provide policy recommendations.

My favorite conference is the Memory Disorders Research Society meeting. It's a delightful community: top-notch research & wonderful people who have been so supportive in my career. Want to join? Nominations for membership (including self-nominations) are open until April 9! Form at the top👇🏼

If you’ve ever read @ianleslie.bsky.social’s wonderful “64 Reasons to Celebrate Paul McCartney”, you’ll know why I was so excited to receive his new book today. Can’t wait to read it! www.ian-leslie.com/p/64-reasons...

🌸Cambridge Festival 2025 is upon us🌸 📆Come join the Department of #Psychology for the #Family Weekend (March 29-30) 🔗For details, have a look on the website: www.festival.cam.ac.uk/events 🔎 Enter "Psychology" and "Old Cavendish" to see our events! @cambridgefestival #CamFest2025

In my ongoing quest to publish as many academic papers with Arnold Schwazenegger movies as part of the title, I give you…..Total Recall….out today and free to read www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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/...

Interesting episode on lockdowns and kids with my brilliant colleague Prof Claire Hughes www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

The loss of a legend- Kanzi, the language-competent bonobo, has died age 44. Kanzi was exceptional in so many ways and offered us profound insights into the linguistic & cognitive capacities of great apes. He has taught us so much and will be hugely missed. www.apeinitiative.org/remembering-...

So many people I speak to, across numerous academic disciplines, are coming to this same, sad decision. What a terrible shame.

Survey data probably not the most reliable measure of human intelligence, but evidence suggests that IQ test scores have been declining for some time, perhaps as far back as the 1990s www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

You don't want to read this. And I don't want to write it. iandunt.substack.com/p/you-dont-w...

With generous support from @ukri.org's new cross research council funding scheme, we recently launched our project 'When Memories Come Alive' with the first meeting of Memory Club, bringing people together from diverse disciplines to reflect on vivid remembering www.english.cam.ac.uk/research/mem...

If you’ve ever been fooled by oversimplified or misleading claims online, there is more that you can do to protect yourself, a new study finds. Misinformation training can be an effective tool for helping people identify and reject fake news in as little as one month.

|| New Publication (Nature Communications) Psychological Booster Shots Targeting Memory​ Increase Long-Term Resistance Against Misinformation doi.org/10.1038/s414... Press Release www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-03... Key Findings * Inoculation works * Effects dissipate * Booster shots remedy this (1/10)