Lexi Decker
Asst. Prof of Psych & Brain @ WashU| former postdoc @ MIT BCS & PhD @ UofToronto | Sustained & Selective Attention, Learning, Episodic Memory, Development, Socioeconomic Status | Environment
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerNow out in an issue! ~~ www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
- Evidence for episodic-like memory in infancy is everywhere, if you know how to look for it! It was such a pleasure to write this paper with @lillianbehm.bsky.social and Nick Turk-Browne, out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social. #psychscisky #cogscisky #philsky #cogdev
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerAwake infant fMRI offers a rare window into early brain and cognitive development. In a new paper out now in Infancy, we leverage data from hundreds of infant scans from the Saxe and Turk-Browne Labs to reveal what factors drive scanning success — and how future studies can maximize data retention!
- ❗New Paper❗Is children's attention more like a spotlight that darts across time, or one that diffuses across many things at once? How might children's immature attention help their learning? Our Dev Sci Paper has answers! 🧵🎯 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41549519/
- We found that kids' immature selective attention allowed them to learn more—even stuff we explicitly told them to ignore! Their "leaky" attention mediated better memory for task-irrelevant information
- But kids' broad attention didn't always"diffuse" over everything. Instead, it appeared to "dart" between relevant and irrelevant information across time - narrowing in on one one or the other in each moment
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View full threadThanks to Amy Sue Finn, @duncanlabuoft.bsky.social Katherine Duncan, and other amazing collaborators for always inspiring me!
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerOur stellar graduate alum Dr. Alexandra Decker is looking for a Lab Manager for her lab, the Learning and Development lab@WashU! 🧠 If you are interested in attention, learning and memory in children and adults, this is the place to be. See her posts for more details! #Research #Psychology
- Apply here! wustl.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...
- Apply here! wustl.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...
- 🧠 Hiring a Research Assistant/Lab Manager! Share widely! 📍 St. Louis | ⏰ Full-time We're launching the How We Learn Lab @WashU, studying attention, learning & memory interactions. Perfect for anyone interested in dev cog neuro who wants hands-on experience before grad school. deckerlab.com
- 🧠 Hiring a Research Assistant/Lab Manager! Share widely! 📍 St. Louis | ⏰ Full-time We're launching the How We Learn Lab @WashU, studying attention, learning & memory interactions. Perfect for anyone interested in dev cog neuro who wants hands-on experience before grad school. deckerlab.com
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerMy lab is recruiting a postdoc and a full-time research technician to work on an NIH-funded project studying age-related changes in memory for naturalistic events. Behavior, fMRI, and blood-based biomarkers. 3+ years funding guaranteed. Postdoc: tinyurl.com/ykjfbnj8 Tech: tinyurl.com/2f2hw3f5
- Reposted by Lexi Decker"The decision in Cycle Toronto v Ontario was a strong rebuke to government overreach when those actions put people’s lives at risk and are unsupported by facts and data. We look forward to defending that victory in court on Jan. 28.”
- The CCF will support the Ontario government’s appeal of a ruling that blocked the removal of downtown Toronto bike lanes #ONpoli #BikeTO cyclingmagazine.ca/sections/new...
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerThanks to @shawnballard.bsky.social for this terrific synopsis of our latest work in @cellpress.bsky.social. The details of how stimulant medications like Ritalin work inside the brain will surprise you! doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
- What if we've misunderstood how ADHD stimulants work? WashU Medicine brain imaging and child neurology teams joined forces to uncover where in the brain these drugs act — knowledge that could improve how attention disorders are treated. medicine.washu.edu/news/stimula...
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerThis is your brain on Ritalin. Got your attention? Stimulant medications like Ritalin (methylphenidate) do, but not in the way you might think. They don't act directly on the brain’s attention systems! Find out what's really happening in @cellpress.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerOur paper on the ☀️ "summer slide" 🛝 is out now @pnas.org! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Summer slide is a replicable phenomenon across diverse datasets that's more than "forgetting" school material in vacation months, but effects of socioeconomic inequality are ➡️ 7x bigger! ⬅️ #PsychSciSky #DevPsy 🧵👇
- ☀️ New preprint! ☀️ Cognitive tests from 23,000+ participants in 4 datasets show cyclical fluctuations across the calendar year, including a small but replicable “summer slide” where youth show worst performance after school vacation. t.ly/OMzgl #PsychSciSky #CogPsyc #CogDev #devpsy #CogSci Thread /1
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerVery happy to share our paper on the "summer slide" in kid's cognitive test scores is out now in @pnas.org! We find a replicable dip in performance across multiple domains of cognition in >23,000 kids across 4 datasets! Check out the 🧵 from @ariellekeller.bsky.social below! 👇
- Our paper on the ☀️ "summer slide" 🛝 is out now @pnas.org! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Summer slide is a replicable phenomenon across diverse datasets that's more than "forgetting" school material in vacation months, but effects of socioeconomic inequality are ➡️ 7x bigger! ⬅️ #PsychSciSky #DevPsy 🧵👇
- Honored that our soon-to-launch lab is included in this Liftoff piece! Grateful to everyone who has helped me get here and excited to keep learning with trainees and collaborators. Thanks to @thetransmitter.bsky.social @franciscorr25.bsky.social for highlighting this early stage of building a lab!
- Check out the last edition of “Liftoff” for 2025 featuring @shoenhard-lab.bsky.social and @lexidecker.bsky.social’s new labs! Looking forward to more new neuroscience lab highlights next year! #neuroskyence
- Reposted by Lexi Decker📣We have 2 open faculty positions for senior researchers in Neuroscience at Queen's University! healthsci.queensu.ca/administrati... 1. a new Director for our Centre for Neuroscience Studies 2. a non-human primate NeuroAI researcher Please share widely and reach out for questions!
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerIt’s out! Our article in Nature Human Behavior led by Yin Wang on the conceptual structure of human relationships across cultures and time. This work is breathtaking nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerA recent meta-analysis published in @nature.com finds that there is no general effect of economic inequality on well-being or mental health (though there are some effects for specific groups, e.g. low-income samples). Read more details in the full paper here: 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerDid you know that chatting with LLMs can shift people's attitudes towards political candidates & policy issues? A recent @nature.com paper show that AI chatbots can persuade voters to change their minds; a related paper in @science.org describes when they work best www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerWe are hiring an assistant professor in cognitive neural systems in the department of psychology at the university of arizona. please use this link to check out the requirements and apply! arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerWe should probably be placing incarcerated people in prisons closest to their homes. Why? Assigning individuals to prisons closer to their home reduces recidivism. Really? Yep. Being placed close to one's home increases social contacts that appear to reduce reoffending.
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerOur graduate student @catalinayang.bsky.social shows that prediction errors only destabilize weakly reactivated memories. Strong memories? They are more impervious to surprise. Check out our #preprint with @barense.bsky.social to learn more osf.io/preprints/ps... #UofT #Psychology
- Super excited to share my first preprint with Katherine Duncan and Morgan Barense (@barense.bsky.social) -- "Memory strength at reactivation, not memory age, governs prediction error driven updating of naturalistic event memory"! 🧠🎉https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/q9rkn_v1
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerWe're thrilled to announce the publication of our newest paper in @plosone.org 🎉 "Aging and episodic memory specificity: Evidence challenging a domain-general pattern separation decline" Read Dr. Youm's full paper here: doi.org/10.1371/jour... @melaniecohn.bsky.social #Memory #Psychology #Aging
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerAustralia just recorded zero cervical cancer cases in women under 25 for the first time since records began in 1982. The amazing result of HPV vaccination.
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerBoston's Mayor Wu playing with Yo-Yo Ma at Symphony Hall
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerWe need a total and complete shutdown of WSJ data graphics until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on. h/t @merz.bsky.social @drmikewiser.bsky.social
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerHow does mindfulness change body awareness? Excited to share our meta-analysis on mindfulness training and #interoception. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerWe put out this preprint a couple months ago, but I really wanted to replicate our findings before we went to publication. At first, what we found was very confusing! But when we dug in, it revealed a fascinating neural strategy for how we switch between tasks doi.org/10.1101/2024.09.29.615736 🧵
- 🎉New project 🎉 doi.org/10.1101/2024... How do we navigate between brain states when we switch tasks? Are dynamics driven by control, or passive decay of the prev task? We shed light on this classic debate by comparing high-d linear dynamical systems fit to EEGs and RNNs during task-switching 🌀
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerPlease repost! I am looking for a PhD candidate in the area of Computational Cognitive Neuroscience to start in early 2026. The position is funded as part of the Excellence Cluster "The Adaptive Mind" at @jlugiessen.bsky.social. Please apply here until Nov 25: www.uni-giessen.de/de/ueber-uns...
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerNew in @pnas.org. Preschool teachers were less likely to accept participation attempts by children from working-class backgrounds, regardless of their perceived language level. With a great team: @andreicimpian.bsky.social @sebastiengoudeau.bsky.social & Louise Goupil. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerI will be recruiting 🌟PhD students🌟 for my newish lab! If you're interested in learning & memory mechanisms applied to individual, interactive & collective behavior using computational modeling, real-world experiments and fMRI, email me! RTs much appreciated 🙏 rouhanilab.com
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerSo grateful for this collab with rockstar @caitlyncody.bsky.social and our mentors! Excited to share our translational take on the neurodevelopment of anxiety in adolescence (and can’t believe my first publication is live!)
- 📣New review 📣 Hot off the presses! This paper from a recent special issue in @fluxsociety.bsky.social was a collaborative effort between myself and co-lead author @rebeccahennessy.bsky.social with the support of our PIs Heather Brenhouse and Juliet Davidow. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Excited to share that I'm joining WashU in January as an Assistant Prof in Psych & Brain Sciences! 🧠✨! I'm also recruiting grad students to start next September - come hang out with us! Details about our lab here: www.deckerlab.com Reposts are very welcome! 🙌 Please help spread the word!
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerI’m super excited to finally put my recent work with @behrenstimb.bsky.social on bioRxiv, where we develop a new mechanistic theory of how PFC structures adaptive behaviour using attractor dynamics in space and time! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerUCDavis Psych is hiring an Assistant Professor in Human Cognition or Cognitive Neuroscience 🧠✨ Come join a vibrant, collaborative dept and live in a fun college town near Sacramento, San Francisco, Napa, and Lake Tahoe. Applications due Oct.21. Please share widely! recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07300
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerHow is prefrontal neural activity refined as we age? Out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com! This study, from Elizabeth Johnson, uncovers how subtle changes in neural 'noise' impact our attention, memory, and cognition through development. Proud to have contributed! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerOut now: a unique multi-lab collaboration led by @matthiasnau.bsky.social showing that recalling a movie reactivates both neural and gaze patterns for sequences of scenes!
- Excited to share our new paper w/ @cibaker.bsky.social in @natcomms.nature.com linking active vision & memory! We provide evidence that gaze reinstatement & neural reactivation are deeply related phenomena that jointly reflect the experiences constructed during recall. doi.org/10.1038/s414... 🧵1/9
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerA brain-imaging study of people with amputated arms has upended a long-standing belief go.nature.com/3Jp9NPG
- Reposted by Lexi Decker𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁? Don't miss the Neuroscience and Philosophy Salon. Earl Miller and team will discuss recent paper and we'll have plenty of discussion. Open to all. Sept 12, noon EST-US umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi... #neuroskyence @earlkmiller.bsky.social
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerATTN🚨: I will be looking for PhD students through NYU's Center for Data Science PhD program this year. Applicants should have an interest in either NeuroAI (specifically biological attention or AI interpretability) or ML for Remote Sensing. Visit my lab website for more info: lindsay-lab.github.io
- Reposted by Lexi DeckerIs the hippocampus best understood in term of discrete subfields or functional gradients? Functional gradients are recapitulated within each hippocampal subfield, supporting a role for both discrete & continuously changing computations. Neat work by Bouffard, @barense.bsky.social, & Moscovitch!
- Thrilled to share our new @NatureComms paper: "Exploration is associated with socioeconomic disparities in learning and academic achievement in adolescence." www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵1/7
- External barriers, like reduced enrichment or support, contribute to lower learning outcomes for children from lower-SES backgrounds. But what about internal decision-making strategies?
- We zoom in on a fundamental part of learning: the balance between exploring new options and exploiting known rewards. Theory predicts that in environments with fewer resources, children might play it safe, exploring less, exploiting more.
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- Reposted by Lexi DeckerI decided not to go to cogsci in person due to the current political situation in the US. If you're still interested in our work on developmental change in cognitive effort, you can find a video summary here: underline.io/events/489/p...
