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What does the claustrum do?

February 9, 2022 admin Leave a comment

Here with colleagues from physiology, we revclauiew the clinical effects of damage to the claustrum in Atilgan et al. (2022).…

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Hunger increases reinforcement learning rate

May 26, 2021 admin Leave a comment

Sometimes we plan ahead, thinking about future consequences of our actions. Other times, we select actions based only on their…

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Frontal brain damage makes decisions less biased

February 13, 2021 admin Leave a comment

Learning from reinforcement is a classic way to study how brain areas contribute to adaptive behaviour. The most frontal parts…

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Drugs affect subtypes of Parkinson’s disease differently

December 26, 2020 admin Leave a comment

In this commentary, I discuss the implications of new work from Hanneke Den Ouden’s lab. The authors subdivided Parkinson’s disease…

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Parkinson’s medication has opposite effects on two kinds of motivation

November 29, 2020 admin Leave a comment

Patients with Parkinson’s disease lack the brain chemical dopamine. Dopamine is thought to signal upcoming rewards, and this might explain…

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Are working memory and visual search windows into the same neural process?

October 1, 2020 admin Leave a comment

When you recall an item from memory, a prompt usually brings associated parts of that item into mind. Could this…

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Pupil size betrays contents of working memory

October 25, 2019 admin Leave a comment

When we hold several things in short-term memory, we can shift our attention internally between different features in memory. For…

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Dopamine can make our working memory more or less flexible

September 19, 2019 admin Leave a comment

Dopamine drugs are used to treat Parkinson’s disease, and alter a wide range of brain functions. One role of dopamine…

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Conjunctive coding neurons in prefrontal cortex

Neural model of working memory

July 29, 2019 admin Leave a comment

Is it possible to account for our patterns of short-term remembering and forgetting, and at the same time, make predictions…

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Why does it feel effortful to be precise?

April 2, 2019 admin Leave a comment

Our eye movements are controlled by a relatively simple circuit in the brainstem. Remarkably, it seems to operate with less…

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Recent Posts

  • What does the claustrum do? February 9, 2022
  • Hunger increases reinforcement learning rate May 26, 2021
  • Frontal brain damage makes decisions less biased February 13, 2021
  • Drugs affect subtypes of Parkinson’s disease differently December 26, 2020
  • Parkinson’s medication has opposite effects on two kinds of motivation November 29, 2020
  • Are working memory and visual search windows into the same neural process? October 1, 2020
  • Pupil size betrays contents of working memory October 25, 2019
  • Dopamine can make our working memory more or less flexible September 19, 2019
  • Neural model of working memory July 29, 2019
  • Why does it feel effortful to be precise? April 2, 2019

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    Sanjay ManoharFollow

    Cognition is a tool we use for understanding the brain around us.

    Sanjay Manohar
    somnironsRui Ponte Costa 🇺🇦@somnirons·

    📢 Postdoc (2x) Alert!
    Are you fascinated by AI-driven neuroscience? Get in touch -- two positions will open soon. Please RT. @BristolNeurosci @BristolCNU @BristolUniEng

    Reply on Twitter 1529435177419780097Retweet on Twitter 152943517741978009737Like on Twitter 152943517741978009755
    HelfrichLabHelfrichLab@HelfrichLab·

    New PhD opportunity: With @nick_e_myers we have a fully-funded 3+1yrs position on the flexibility of human memory. Spend time @UniofNottingham (MEG, decoding) and @uktuebingen @TueNeuroCampus (intracranial EEG, network connectivity) (1/2)

    Reply on Twitter 1528639692207448064Retweet on Twitter 152863969220744806450Like on Twitter 152863969220744806465
    boeslabAaron Boes@boeslab·

    The individual with this precuneus lesion experienced a dramatic change in how he perceived the passage of time after surgery of a glioma.

    Minutes felt like hours… each time he would check his watch he’d be surprised how little time had passed. 👇

    Reply on Twitter 1529154673923567622Retweet on Twitter 1529154673923567622376Like on Twitter 15291546739235676221950
    sebraemSenne Braem@sebraem·

    We're looking for a PhD student on the topic of cognitive control and reinforcement learning! Deadline June 5th. For more information, please see https://users.ugent.be/~sbraem/. @GhentCCN @ERC_Research @CogNeuroJobs

    Reply on Twitter 1524333849467101185Retweet on Twitter 152433384946710118570Like on Twitter 152433384946710118568
    LHuntNeuroLaurence Hunt@LHuntNeuro·

    1-year research assistant position now available in cog comp neuroscience. Help run behavioural, EEG/MEG experiments, possibly VR - exciting time as our lab establishes itself at @OxExpPsy. Ideal stepping stone to subsequent PhD. Please RT, and apply! https://tinyurl.com/ycxr9p2z

    Reply on Twitter 1525097359922929664Retweet on Twitter 152509735992292966499Like on Twitter 1525097359922929664137
    MasudHusainMasud Husain@MasudHusain·

    Subjective cognitive impairment in people who don’t go on to develop Alzheimer’s is an under-explored area. @bahaatallah @PetitetPierre @BrainInTheMind show how response to uncertainty can be heightened in this condition.
    https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.75834

    Reply on Twitter 1524392439175426048Retweet on Twitter 15243924391754260487Like on Twitter 152439243917542604824
    bahaatallahBahaa Atallah@bahaatallah·

    Happy to see this finally out in @eLife. With @PetitetPierre @YoussufSaleh @BrainInTheMind @MasudHusain

    Hyperreactivity to uncertainty is a key feature of subjective cognitive impairment https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.75834

    Reply on Twitter 1524326486953582592Retweet on Twitter 15243264869535825928Like on Twitter 152432648695358259217
    evaferedoesevalab@evaferedoes·

    Really excited to see this work taking shape: TMS-fMRI-MVPA-CM (computational modelling) to understand impact of DLPFC TMS on selecting relevant over irrelevant information @AlexWoolgar @BrainInTheMind and modeller extraordinaire Christopher Whyte of @mrccbu #tmsfmriworkshop

    Reply on Twitter 1522603609627795461Retweet on Twitter 15226036096277954617Like on Twitter 152260360962779546142
    MillerLabMITEarl K. Miller@MillerLabMIT·

    Excellent review with a clever title.

    Taking stock of value in the orbitofrontal cortex
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-022-00589-2

    Reply on Twitter 1518979417015406592Retweet on Twitter 151897941701540659212Like on Twitter 151897941701540659271
    BrainInTheMindSanjay Manohar@BrainInTheMind·

    3D plots upset me so frequently that I made this teaching aid. #DataScience #Datavisualization

    Reply on Twitter 1517543839833243649Retweet on Twitter 15175438398332436491023Like on Twitter 15175438398332436497348
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    Recent work

    • What does the claustrum do?
      Here with colleagues from physiology, we revclauiew the clinical effects of damage to the claustrum in Atilgan et al. (2022). The claustrum is a thin sheet of neurons in the frontal lobe. Very few reported cases have isolated claustrum damage. In those who did, the findings don’t clearly reflect what you might expect, given the known fMRI activations and connections of the claustrum. […]
    • Hunger increases reinforcement learning rate
      Sometimes we plan ahead, thinking about future consequences of our actions. Other times, we select actions based only on their immediate reward associations. Planning ahead is crucial to staying healthy, but might be affected by motivation. We asked whether hunger affects planned vs directly reinforced action (van Swieten, Bogacz & Manohar Cogn. Aff. Beh. Neurosci. 2021). We found that people learned quicker about action values when they were hungry. Hunger didn’t affect planning. […]
    • Frontal brain damage makes decisions less biased
      Learning from reinforcement is a classic way to study how brain areas contribute to adaptive behaviour. The most frontal parts of the brain probably contribute at a very high, abstract level. In this study (Manohar et al. Cortex 2021), we asked how confident people are in what they have learned. Underside of a human brain showing a part of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Healthy people are biased by previous choices, and by competing information, when making these […]
    • Drugs affect subtypes of Parkinson’s disease differently
      In this commentary, I discuss the implications of new work from Hanneke Den Ouden’s lab. The authors subdivided Parkinson’s disease patients into those with and without tremor, and found that learning was affected by dopamine in opposite directions in the two groups! […]
    • Parkinson’s medication has opposite effects on two kinds of motivation
      Patients with Parkinson’s disease lack the brain chemical dopamine. Dopamine is thought to signal upcoming rewards, and this might explain why patients on treatment can develop impulse control disorders. My lab is studying two different ways to motivate people. One way is to reward or punish them based on how well they do — like performance-related pay. The other way is to promise a guaranteed reward, which also tends to keep people motivated (even though they don’t have to). […]
    • Are working memory and visual search windows into the same neural process?
      When you recall an item from memory, a prompt usually brings associated parts of that item into mind. Could this process be the same thing that occurs when you search for a visual target? We tested a neural model designed to perform working memory tasks, to see if it could also perform visual search. The model retrieves information when a partial cue re-activates a pattern of neurons by associative pattern completion. This same process could occur when we look for an item that we have in mind: […]
    • Pupil size betrays contents of working memory
      When we hold several things in short-term memory, we can shift our attention internally between different features in memory. For example we might hold two visual objects in memory, and choose to think about one of them. We show that pupils shrink when we are currently thinking of a bright object, in our recent study published in PNAS with Nahid Zokaei and Kia Nobre. […]