Memory

Recent articles

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Memory study sparks debate over statistical methods

Critics of a 2024 Nature paper suggest the authors failed to address the risk of false-positive findings. The authors argue more rigorous methods can result in missed leads.

By Katie Moisse
2 July 2025 | 5 min read

Expanded view of hippocampal function comes into focus

After decades of debate, the region’s role is being rewritten. Rather than using sensory input to simply log key points in time and space, the hippocampus may serve to contextualize our experiences and memories—and ultimately make predictions about the future.

By Natalia Mesa
24 June 2025 | 11 min listen
Illustration of synapse-like threads connecting in various ways.

Learning in living mice defies classic synaptic plasticity rule

Donald Hebb’s theory—memorably summarized as “cells that fire together, wire together”—does not explain the shifting hippocampal connections in mice learning to navigate a virtual environment, according to a new study.

By Sydney Wyatt
28 May 2025 | 6 min listen
Image of brain cell activity in rat brains.

Sleep doesn’t just consolidate memories; it actively shapes them

The rapid eye movement (REM) phase preserves newly acquired memories, but deeper non-REM sleep helps to adapt and update them, according to “heroic” day-long electrode recordings in rats.

By Giorgia Guglielmi
6 May 2025 | 6 min listen
Cognitive neuroscientist Nick Turk-Browne helps an infant into an fMRI machine.

What infant fMRI is revealing about the developing mind

Cognitive neuroscientists have finally clocked how to perform task-based functional MRI experiments in awake babies—long known for their inability to lie still or take direction. Next, they aim to watch cognition take shape and settle a debate about our earliest memories—with one group publishing a big clue today.

By Calli McMurray
20 March 2025 | 12 min read

Alison Preston explains how our brains form mental frameworks for interpreting the world

Preston discusses her research examining differences in how children, teenagers and adults integrate new information into their memories.

By Paul Middlebrooks
12 March 2025 | 90 min listen

Ciara Greene on the quirks and complexities of human episodic memory

Greene's book, “Memory Lane: The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember,” explores the many factors that affect how we recall the events in our lives, from the mundane to the emotionally powerful.

By Paul Middlebrooks
26 February 2025 | 89 min listen
Research image of a mouse brain slice stained in purple and yellow.

Subthalamic plasticity helps mice squelch innate fear responses

When the animals learn that a perceived threat is not dangerous, long-term activity changes in a part of the subthalamus suppress their instinctive fears.

By Sydney Wyatt
6 February 2025 | 5 min read

David Robbe challenges conventional notions of time and memory

Inspired by his own behavioral neuroscience research and the philosophy of Henri Bergson, Robbe makes the case that we don't have clocks in our brains but instead perceive time by way of our interactions with the world.

By Paul Middlebrooks
29 January 2025 | 98 min listen
Eleanor Maguire.

Remembering Eleanor Maguire, ‘trailblazer’ of human memory

Maguire, mastermind of the famous London taxi-driver study, broadened the field and championed the importance of spatial representations in memory.

By Calli McMurray
10 January 2025 | 8 min read

Explore more from The Transmitter

Research image of mouse visual cortex neurons.

Null and Noteworthy: Downstream brain areas read visual cortex signals en masse in mice

The finding contradicts a theory that the regions prioritize neurons that are adept at identifying specific stimuli. Plus, a response to a study that questioned immune memory in astrocytes.

By Laura Dattaro
31 July 2025 | 4 min read

Poor image quality introduces systematic bias into large neuroimaging datasets

Analyses that include low-quality MRI data underestimate cortical thickness and overestimate cortical surface area, according to new findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study.

By Natalia Mesa
31 July 2025 | 7 min listen
Illustration of the outlines of a baby, a bee and a robot filled in with computer code-like characters.

Babies, bees and bots: On the hunt for markers of consciousness

To truly understand consciousness, we need new methods to measure it and detect it in other intelligent systems.

By Tim Bayne
30 July 2025 | 6 min read