Hugo Spiers
Prof of Cognitive Neuroscience & Vice Dean at UCL, Fellow of the Royal Inst. of Navigation. I study how we remember, navigate & imagine space
Photo: Our upcoming field research in the Marshall Islands
spierslab.wixsite.com/wavesandwayfinding
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- Reposted by Hugo SpiersMost people can call up pictures in their minds, visualizing the past & summoning images of the future. But for ~4% of us, such mental imagery is weak or absent. New edition of @nature.com has a nice introduction to how research on this phenomenon (aphantasia) opens up novel windows into the brain.🧪
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- How the brain's 'memory replay' goes wrong in Alzheimer's disease @ucl press release on @caswell.bsky.social lab new study: www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2026/ja...
- More exciting updates linked to AD and place cell patterns:
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- Fascinating neuropsych article from 1919 of a patient with spatial disorientation, with a loss of mental imagery for routes: watermark02.silverchair.com/archneurpsyc...
- Tonight/today 6pm UK / 7pm CET / 1pm EST I'll be giving an talk about research in my lab on Neuroarchitecture, tracking, scanning people as they experience and navigate spaces: meet.google.com/wbo-iqwy-zzk
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- Does indeed look like a labyrinth and not a maze!
- For #MosaicMonday a #Roman mosaic showing the labyrinth of the Minotaur on Crete. The monster’s head is depicted in the centre. The simple depiction is alluding to the myth of Theseus, in which the Greek hero slays the Minotaur in the labyrinth with the help ... 🧵1/2 📷🏺 #Archaeology
- Reposted by Hugo Spiers𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁/𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗱𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰 So we model the dynamics. Version of record of our paper is available. #neuroskyence elifesciences.org/articles/102...
- An interesting approach to cover the rise of cognitive offloading, by the @dailymail.co.uk I contribute in places, covering London taxi driver's hippocampal size & our Javadi et al., 2017 Nat Comms article on the impact of GPS guidance on fMRI activity in navigation www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDYx...
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- Reposted by Hugo SpiersRefreshing to see a rhetorical device often used by anti-migration politicians flipped by @alanbeattie.bsky.social "More people attend English League Two football matches to watch the likes of Accrington Stanley and Crawley Town in an average week than arrived by small boat in the whole of 2025."
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- Block that acetylcholine and just doesn't feel worth it any more... Cholinergic modulation of dopamine release drives effortful behaviour www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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- Reposted by Hugo SpiersWhether the system can be flexibly redirected to prioritize specific locations has been unclear. Using large-scale #Neuropixels recordings in freely behaving rats, we find that both sweeps – and the internal direction signals driving them – are dynamically modulated moment by moment. (4/6)
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- I have a feeling I'm not the first person to ask Gemini this...
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- Reposted by Hugo SpiersThe hippocampal map has its own attentional control signal! Our new study reveals that theta #sweeps can be instantly biased towards behaviourally relevant locations. See 📹 in post 4/6 and preprint here 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵(1/6)
- I recommend following @ahistoryinart.bsky.social for wonderful posts of paintings and snippets of facts about the artist or painting.
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- Reposted by Hugo SpiersTears of joy! SCOTLAND HAS JUST PASSED SWIFT BRICKS INTO LAW unanimously! 4 years of asking England & Scotland sorts it in a month led by ACE MARK RUSKELL MSP ♥️The RELIEF is unreal! Tell England to follow 🏴by emailing PlanningPolicyConsultation@communities.gov.uk now!WOOP!
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- Reposted by Hugo SpiersAuschwitz was at the end of a process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers. This hatred gradually developed: from ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder. Auschwitz took time.
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- Well argued article about the current state of things www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
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- Very interesting read from Andrew about his experience in Deepmind in the context of comparing it to academia. My assumption is the main reason to be in academia is the excitement to read published discoveries and then making those discoveries yourself, rather than what industry needs.
- Should you go to academia or industry for research in AI or cognitive science? It's the most common question I get asked by PhD students, and I've written up some of my thoughts on the answer, as an epilogue to my research-focused series on these fields: infinitefaculty.substack.com/p/on-researc...
- Reposted by Hugo SpiersNew real-world field study *inoculating* against misinformation in live social media scroll feeds out in Harvard Misinfo Review @misinforeview.bsky.social We targeted +375k users with a short ad on Insta using a novel quasi-experimental method (1/3) misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/preb...
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- Reposted by Hugo SpiersRipple oscillations are central for memory and sleep. But ripple detection in humans remains challenging. Here we introduce a simulation approach in @natcomms.nature.com as common ripple detectors mainly pick up 1/f noise and not genuine oscillations 👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroskyence
- Prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease pathology in the community Impressive sample of 11,000+ participants: in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Davos 2026 | What Matters on the Road to AGI? Demis Hassabis on the Missing Ingredients www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNXR...
- Ten Principles for Crowdsourcing Human Behavior Online osf.io/nhtu2_v1
- Reposted by Hugo SpiersVoxelwise Encoding Models (VEMs) are a great framework for modeling fMRI data, but it can be difficult to implement. We've made VEM accessible by providing software, tutorials and reviews that guide its use an implementation. Get it here: gallantlab.org/blog/2025-12... #neuroscience, #neuroimaging
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- Hippocampal Signal Complexity Predicts Navigational Performance: Evidence From a Two-Week VR Training Program onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
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- Reposted by Hugo SpiersI spoke to the Secretary-General of NATO, Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Friedrich Merz and Giorgia Meloni. Together we stand firm in our commitment to uphold the sovereignty of Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark.
- Ants navigating by the moonlight... Comparative use of a polarized light compass for twilight and moonlight navigation in diurnal and nocturnal bull ants royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...
- Reposted by Hugo SpiersTerritorial integrity and sovereignty are fundamental principles of international law. They are essential for Europe and for the international community as a whole.
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- Reposted by Hugo SpiersThis book is a wonderful, synthetic and richly illustrated journey through the natural history of the vertebrate brain 🤩 A big thank you to the authors 🙏 "A major theme in the evolution of the telencephalon has been the emergence of novel pathways... 1/2
- If you happen to be in Oxford on Monday, I'll be speaking in @oxexppsy.bsky.social about my recent research on cognition and emotions navigating the Marshall Islands: @oxexppsy.bsky.social www.psy.ox.ac.uk/events
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- Congrats to @markbrandonlab.bsky.social and his lab for this exciting discovery about the hippocampus and reward:
- Nature research paper: Predictive coding of reward in the hippocampus go.nature.com/49mB13V
- Reposted by Hugo SpiersExplore our courses calendar, updated with new neuroscience courses from the @jacksonlab.bsky.social, the @cajal-training.bsky.social, @neuromatch.bsky.social and more. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/courses/?utm...
- Spatial contexts with reliable neural representations support reinstatement of subsequently placed objects www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Prior novelty invigorates future mesolimbic target detection www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
- Time Cells in the Human Brain Support Working Memory Maintenance www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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- Reposted by Hugo Spiers"Murmuration over Lanhydrock Park", 2020 by Annie Ovenden, English painter #WomensArt
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- This is going to be an amazing conference in Athens in June 2026 The Neural Basis of Natural Behaviours I'll be there talking about recording brains while riding the waves between atolls on trimaran in the pacific: conferences.weizmann.ac.il/NBNB2026/spe...
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