Marc Coutanche
Neuroscientist, Cognitive Scientist. Examining memory, learning, new fMRI methods, ⬆️ funding for science. Personal account.
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheThis is good news for NIH-funded behavioral scientists and for the public; it resolves an unfortunate Catch-22 situation that inflated administrative burden and occasionally excluded basic behavioral science from funding opportunities: grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheAligning eye tracking and free recall time series, we found that increased saccades predict episodic (vs. non-episodic) by 0.5 s. Just out in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social, led by Ryan Barker with the inimitable @drjenryan.bsky.social. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheUpdate: our latest paper is now available with open access: doi.org/10.1162/IMAG... Hou and colleagues reveal the unique role of both the hippocampus and angular gyrus in supporting high fidelity episodic memories!
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheNew paper from our lab by Ricardo Morales-Torres (@rmt93.bsky.social) on the visual and semantic properties that shape the vividness of mental representations for events past. psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-... The short answer to the title, "What Makes Memories Vivid?" is ... meaning!
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheNature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheDecoding the rhythmic representation and communication of visual contents www.cell.com/trends/neuro... #neuroscience
- Reposted by Marc Coutanche🚨 New preprint 🚨 Are reinforcement learning models complete accounts of decisions from experience if they ignore explicit memory? In this new preprint, we show that people indeed form robust explicit memory representations that flexibly guide later decisions. 🔗 Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheFunders must recognise that great discoveries often come from studies that seeks to advance knowledge for its own sake go.nature.com/47zrzYZ
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheNew preprint! What happens in the brain when people offload memories into external reminders? Using fMRI decoding, we found that the corresponding neural trace fades until it becomes statistically absent. osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵...
- "What matters in your courses, even in many cases within your major, isn't the topic. You'll probably forget most of what you learn, especially if you don't end up using it repeatedly in future. What you will always have, though, is the mind that taking the courses made."
- Newsletter subscribers should have it in their inbox by now news.chanda.science/archive/know...
- Reposted by Marc Coutanche"you will be intellectually transformed by the process of reckoning with the knowledge these courses are about" Essential reading about why learning is important even if/when you forget the specific content (and is especially important in these times)
- Newsletter subscribers should have it in their inbox by now news.chanda.science/archive/know...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheNew paper from the lab 🚨 Led by Ali Golbabaei, this study explores the how the composition of prefrontal cortical engrams changes with memory age: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lzT-3BtfH...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheOpenNeuro @openneuro.bsky.social just hit a huge milestone: 1500 datasets! Congrats to the team on making this project so successful over the last 7 years.
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheForaging in conceptual spaces: hippocampal oscillatory dynamics underlying searching for concepts in memory www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheScience fiction science, by the ever-thoughtful Iyad Rahwan: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheMemory problems will change how you see the world...literally 👀 Across two new papers, we examined the eye movement patterns of younger adults, older adults, individuals with mild cognitive impairment, and amnesic cases. 1/5
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheNew paper out! Imagery can directionally modify memory encoding, to manipulate later recognition for changed faces. Essentially, imagery can be used to simulate effects of higher (or lower) study-test similarity for an item itself. @psychonomicsociety.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheNice demo by Mark Lescroart @neuromdl.bsky.social on EPI imaging of a single #fMRI slice. Great for teaching! :) vimeo.com/143701608?fl...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheLove this article! We need more real-life memory studies. Here is an example study and review from our lab…child development focus. cognitiveresearchjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.... www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Researchers are designing studies that better represent how #memory works in daily life, leading to discoveries about how to intervene when it falters. @runnerteal.bsky.social
- Reposted by Marc Coutanche🚨Our paper `Reclaiming AI as a theoretical tool for cognitive science' is now forthcoming in the journal Computational Brain & Behaviour. (Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...) Below a thread summary 🧵1/n #metatheory #AGI #AIhype #cogsci #theoreticalpsych #criticalAIliteracy
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheNew eLife preprint from Tan Nguyen—Pattern-based functional MRI and computational modeling show evidence for multiple signals contributing to updating the brain's representations of events: elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheEver wondered if your interesting brain-behavior correlation was over- or under-estimated due to head motion, but were afraid to ask? We’ve created a motion impact score for detecting spurious brain-behavior associations, now available in Nature Communications! doi.org/10.1038/s414...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheThe brain represents the world around us as a series of neural states - stable patterns of activity that change as we move from one event to the next. New paper by @selmalugtmeijer.bsky.social showing that neural states get longer as people age. #PsychSciSky nature.com/articles/s42003-025-08792-4
- Reposted by Marc Coutanche🚨🚨New precision imaging study and open dataset 🚨🚨 Featuring almost 200 functional runs acquired in 3-4d intervals and behavioral manipulations focused on intraindividual study of the reward response - The Night Owls Scan Club (NOSC) With @dvsmith.bsky.social and @olinotom.bsky.social!
- Precision Imaging for Intraindividual Investigation of the Reward Response biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheA method for capturing neuronal activity using fMRI excited the neuroimaging field but couldn’t be replicated. Today, the authors of the original paper retracted their work. By @callimcflurry.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/retraction/a...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheExcited to share new work with @hleemasson.bsky.social , Ericka Wodka, Stewart Mostofsky and @lisik.bsky.social! We investigated how simultaneous vision and language signals are combined in the brain using naturalistic+controlled fMRI. Read the paper here: osf.io/b5p4n 1/n
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheI am pleased to share that "the bird study" is now accepted at Psychology and Aging! A great collaboration with visiting intern Kishen Senziani, @leabartsch.bsky.social & @edamizrak.bsky.social 😀 Check out the pre-print below and a short thread on the study design and main takeaways 🧵👇
- What Makes a Birdbrain Tick: Long-term Memory Drives Expertise Effects on Working Memory Binding: osf.io/y835u
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheExcited to release the SPOT grid: a new image set that factorially crosses scene-object & texture-pattern pairings. We hope these stimuli will be useful to researchers aiming to (partially) disentangle the contributions of lower- and higher-level visual features to behavior & brain activity. 1/
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheNew paper alert! 🚨 We show that age-related neural dedifferentiation in scene-selective cortex is tied to changes in eye movements. Using simultaneous fMRI + eye-tracking, we found that younger adults’ fixations covary with scene specificity, but this link weakens with age. Link in post below 👇
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheNew preprint! My stellar undergrad, June Kim, & @charan-neuro.bsky.social find that intersubject pattern similarity at encoding (especially in posteromedial cortex) relates to shared/differing content between Ss at recall (measured using topic modeling) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheNew pre-print day! Distributed and drifting signals for working memory load in human cortex 🧠 (with Ed Awh & @serences.bsky.social) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheThis is an incredible development for all types of conditions. Including neuromodulation for depression (like TMS) which is currently largely limited to the brain's surface whereas some of the most relevant bits of the mood network lie deep in the brain (subcallosal cingulate, insula ...).
- Might focused ultrasound one day replace DBS? UK Scientists built a 256-panel focused ultrasound helmet that can precisely target deep brain regions. Using theta-burst TUS, they stimulated the LGN and found visual cortex activity with effects lasting up to 40 minutes. #neuroskyence #ultrasound
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheOur latest paper outlining our ecosystem of tools for mining the neuroimaging literature, is finally officially published in eLife! doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
- Reposted by Marc Coutanche
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheSo happy to share our paper on the role of the hippocampus as a mismatch detector: doi.org/10.1073/pnas... We show that the hippocampus detects mismatches between ongoing experiences and episodic memories but not generalised schematic knowledge. See 🧵for how we got here: #neuroskyence #PsychSciSky
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheThat's why I'm here... www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
- Reposted by Marc Coutancheshout out to the journal of the society (That I am a member of) that I review a bunch for charging 5200 for open access via springer nature. was a fun ride, but I am done.
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheHow do the brain’s event representations change as we gain familiarity with an experience? Brain regions’ representations can become coarser or finer as event familiarity increases. Fine-tuning predicts memory recall. Excited to share this work with Narjes Al-Zahli & @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social!
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheOur target discussion article out in Cognitive Neuroscience! It will be followed by peer commentary and our responses. If you would like to write a commentary, please reach out to the journal! 1/18 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... @cibaker.bsky.social @susanwardle.bsky.social
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheAdaptive learning is coordinated across behaviour, time and neurobiology (from synapses and dendrites, to astrocytes and the systems level). If you’ve ever wondered how noradrenaline helps shape these multiscale learning processes, you might like this: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheHey #memory folks, check out this new preprint by @joschadutli.bsky.social , @koberauer.bsky.social, and @leabartsch.bsky.social showing that elaboration benefits are likely driven by aiding in establishing efficient retrieval cues.
- How does semantic elaboration affect retrieval from episodic memory?: osf.io/ktgsu
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheDuring sleep, reuniens theta synchronizes with MEC provoking memory reactivation. rdcu.be/eCMfl
- Here's a set of new results from my lab asking how the brain combines different ideas (concepts)! Now in press at J of Cog Neuro, we looked at how semantic composition (combining different concepts together) shapes brain activity. Preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #neuroskyence
- To give the headline, we found that combining weakly-constrained concepts (like 'canary bus', which can mean a lot of different things) produced larger shifts in the multivariate activity patterns of the underlying concepts, compared to strongly-constrained concepts (like 'book string')
- This shift after combining wasn’t due to sensory input (participants only saw written words). Instead, it likely reflects the consequences of retrieving and manipulating different features of the conceptual space
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View full threadThis was led by Heather Bruett. I'll end with my favorite examples of conceptual combination from Always Sunny: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV0V...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheShare your examples of the terrible losses from cuts to science funding #what_we'll_never_know Message me if you would like to make a video.
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheNew preprint from Yining Ding @liliand.bsky.social! People use semantic event knowledge and grouping to remember the temporal order of events. osf.io/preprints/ps...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheIs 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!
- Reposted by Marc Coutanche𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁'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 Marc Coutanche
This is a superb short video on the consequences of the ongoing destruction of American science. Please watch and circulate. @sebastianseung.bsky.social is fantastic here. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/o... - Reposted by Marc CoutancheThe love of reading is an endangered species. Just 16% of Americans do regular leisure reading—down from 28% in 2003. Only 41% of UK parents read daily to their toddlers—down from 64% in 2012. Books aren't merely a source of flow. They're a gateway to empathy and lifelong learning.
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheThe Experience Sampling literature has always made me really skeptical about inferring cognition from resting state scans. With idiosyncrasies abound, LCDs dominate. This wonderful paper does so much to flesh out our understanding of what behavioral and neural processes might be happening at rest.
- Reposted by Marc Coutanche"Your job is not to turn in completed assignments; it's to learn how to think." cdh.princeton.edu/blog/2025/08...
- Reposted by Marc CoutancheAn abbreviation (ABB) in a journal article (JA) or Grant Application (GA) is rarely worth the words it saves. Every ABB requires cognitive resources (CR) and at my age by the time I'm halfway through a JA or GA I no longer have the CR to remember what your ABB stood for.
