#learningandmemory — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #learningandmemory, aggregated by home.social.
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"Neural dynamics for working memory and evidence integration during olfactory navigation in Drosophila", Kathman et al. 2026 (Kathy Nagel's lab).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-75945-2"Our work localizes working memory and evidence integration to a specific group of neurons"
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"Neural dynamics for working memory and evidence integration during olfactory navigation in Drosophila", Kathman et al. 2026 (Kathy Nagel's lab).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-75945-2"Our work localizes working memory and evidence integration to a specific group of neurons"
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“No evidence for aversive associative olfactory memory through metamorphosis in Drosophila”, Poppinga et al. 2026 (André Fiala’s lab).
https://journals.biologists.com/bio/article/doi/10.1242/bio.062512/372288Puts to rest the Tully et al. 1994 paper nobody trusted nor could reproduce.
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“No evidence for aversive associative olfactory memory through metamorphosis in Drosophila”, Poppinga et al. 2026 (André Fiala’s lab).
https://journals.biologists.com/bio/article/doi/10.1242/bio.062512/372288Puts to rest the Tully et al. 1994 paper nobody trusted nor could reproduce.
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DATE: July 24, 2026 at 08:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Learning a new skill triggers both temporary cell swelling and lasting structural growth in the human brain
A new study published in PLoS Biology has found that learning a new motor skill sets off two different types of cellular changes in the human brain. The findings suggest that the brain experiences a temporary swelling of cell bodies followed by a long-lasting growth of cellular extensions in specific regions. This dual response offers a deeper understanding of how the human brain physically adapts when we learn something new.
Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to remodel its physical structure in response to new experiences. This biological process supports learning and memory, and it also influences a person’s vulnerability to neurological conditions.
Valeria Della-Maggiore, an associate professor at the National University of San Martin and the University of Buenos Aires, led the research. She also serves as an adjunct professor at McGill University and directs the Physiology of Action Lab.
“Structural plasticity, the brain’s ability to remodel its connections in response to experience, is fundamental to learning and memory and shapes development and degenerative disorders,” she told PsyPost. She explained that most human studies over the past two decades have used standard MRI protocols to detect changes in brain microstructure, assuming these changes were always plastic in nature.
“Yet animal studies show that cells may undergo structural changes that do not always reflect synapse remodeling,” Della-Maggiore said. “To disambiguate plastic from non-plastic processes, we combined ultra-high-gradient diffusion MRI with SANDI, a biophysical model that allows making inferences at the level of cellular compartments, that is, cell bodies and cell processes.”
To measure structural changes in humans, scientists have typically relied on a brain scanning technique called diffusion tensor imaging, or DTI. This method measures how water molecules move and diffuse through brain tissue. By tracking this water movement, scientists can infer changes in the brain’s microscopic structure.
DTI blends the signals from various parts of the brain tissue together. “DTI captures a single, global signal: it can tell you that a change in one region lasts longer than in another, but not what underlies it,” Della-Maggiore said. Because of this blending, the technique cannot easily distinguish between a permanent structural change and a temporary biological reaction.
To address this limitation, the authors utilized highly sensitive magnetic resonance imaging paired with the specialized mathematical model called Soma and Neurite Density Imaging, or SANDI. Rather than grouping all tissue signals together, SANDI separates the scanning signals into three distinct categories. These categories include the cell bodies, the cellular extensions called neurites, and the extracellular fluid surrounding the cells.
“This study was only possible through a genuinely multidisciplinary effort, in which neuroscientists, experts in diffusion MRI, mathematicians and modeling specialists, and engineers worked together around a single scientific question,” Della-Maggiore said.
The collaboration included her lab along with the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre. “Bringing these different forms of expertise into alignment is what made it possible to extract biological insight from a non-invasive measurement, something no single discipline could have achieved on its own,” she added.
The study included 29 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 36, consisting of 16 females and 13 males. All participants were right-handed and reported no history of neurological or psychiatric conditions. They completed a motor sequence learning task involving typing a specific five-number sequence on a keyboard using the four fingers of their left, non-dominant hand. The exact sequence was 4-1-3-2-4, with the number 4 representing the index finger and the number 1 representing the pinky finger.
Participants were instructed to type the sequence as quickly and accurately as possible. They completed 15 practice blocks of this finger-tapping sequence. Each block consisted of 12 sequences and was separated by 25 seconds of rest. The entire training session took about 15 to 20 minutes.
To assess how well the participants retained the skill overnight, they were asked to complete eight additional practice blocks 24 hours later. To track brain activity and physical changes, the scientists used an ultra-high-gradient MRI scanner, which offers exceptional sensitivity for capturing microscopic tissue details. They collected functional MRI scans to measure active brain regions during the task. They also collected advanced diffusion MRI scans at three specific points: before the practice session began, 30 minutes after the practice ended, and 24 hours later.
The behavioral data showed that participants improved their typing speed and accuracy primarily during the short rest periods between practice blocks. The functional brain scans aligned with this observation, revealing increased activity in the brain’s memory and motor regions during these brief breaks. However, the most specific discoveries emerged from the SANDI model used to track cellular changes.
“When you learn a new skill, two processes of different spatial and temporal dynamics take place in your brain at the cellular level,” Della-Maggiore said. “One is transient and occurs at the level of cell bodies, which increase in size across all brain regions engaged by the task. The other is persistent, confined to the regions specifically involved in learning, and occurs at the level of cell processes, compatible with structural plasticity.”
The researchers found that DTI scans alone missed a layer of detail. “Our approach revealed something DTI cannot see, that the regions showing lasting changes also carry a transient response,” Della-Maggiore explained. “In other words, beneath what DTI reads as a single persistent effect, there are in fact two distinct processes unfolding on different timescales.”
Specifically, the researchers found a temporary increase in the apparent density of cell bodies across all the brain areas engaged by the task. These areas included the hippocampus, the primary motor cortex, the posterior parietal cortex, and the precuneus. This physical change was observed 30 minutes after the practice session. By the 24-hour mark, the cell bodies in these regions had returned to their normal baseline size.
“The second [surprise] was the spatial pattern: a transient change at the level of the cell body appeared uniformly across all regions engaged by learning, whereas the sustained change in cellular processes was confined to those regions specific to the learned skill,” Della-Maggiore said. “It was this dissociation, in both space and time, that let us infer different biological processes underlying these responses: a homeostatic process such as swelling of cell bodies induced by increased neuronal activity, and cell-process remodeling mediating genuine structural plasticity.”
The authors propose that this short-lived cell expansion is a temporary biological reaction to balance out intense cellular activity. When brain cells are highly active, they experience an imbalance of ions. To correct this imbalance, water flows into the cells, causing them to temporarily swell.
In addition to the temporary swelling, the SANDI model revealed a second, longer-lasting change in specific areas of the brain. The researchers observed a sustained increase in the density of cellular extensions in the precuneus and the posterior parietal cortex. These cellular extensions include structures like dendrites and axons, which connect different brain cells to one another.
This increase in cellular extensions persisted a full day after the learning task. The researchers noticed a direct link to task performance. “Notably, the more a person improved, the stronger this second change was,” Della-Maggiore said.
Interestingly, this long-lasting structural remodeling did not occur in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is a brain region known for helping encode new memories early in the learning process. The findings suggest that while the hippocampus is engaged initially, the long-term structural changes required to retain a motor skill happen in the outer layers of the brain, known as the cortex.
“The broader message is that a change in brain structure is not, in itself, evidence of learning-related plasticity,” Della-Maggiore said. “Being able to separate these processes in a living brain, non-invasively, provides something that did not exist before in human neuroscience: a mechanistic window onto brain plasticity, allowing us to begin inferring biological mechanisms directly in humans rather than relying on animal models.”
Interpreting these findings requires acknowledging a few limitations related to the scanning technology. The SANDI model estimates relative signal fractions of cell components rather than providing a direct physical measurement of cellular volume. The technique relies on specific mathematical assumptions about how water moves in the brain.
“Our approach does not quantify cells or cell processes directly,” Della-Maggiore explained. “It infers how much different cellular components contribute to the MRI signal, based on a biophysical model whose interpretation is grounded in animal and histological evidence.”
She added that referring to changes in cell bodies or cell processes involves principled inferences, not microscopic observations. “The strength of the method lies in tracking how these signals evolve over time, compared against the person’s own baseline,” she said.
The study focused on a specific finger-tapping task in a small group of healthy young adults. Different types of learning, such as studying a new language or solving complex math problems, might engage different cellular mechanisms. “Our broader aim is to keep refining this approach to probe the biological mechanisms of plasticity in ever greater detail, directly in humans,” Della-Maggiore said.
The researchers hope to apply this multi-compartment imaging approach to other areas of neuroscience. “Beyond learning, distinguishing genuine, adaptive remodeling from other processes could prove valuable in contexts such as development, aging, and disease, including conditions like neurodegeneration or neuroinflammation, where telling apart healthy from harmful structural change is both difficult and clinically important,” she said.
“The results move the field beyond descriptive diffusion changes toward mechanistic inference, which is particularly valuable for studies of learning, development, and disease,” Della-Maggiore concluded.
The study, “Learning engages transient and sustained cellular mechanisms in the human brain,” was authored by Guillermina Griffa, Marco Palombo, Abraham Yeffal, Hong-Hsi Lee, Agustin Solano, Susie Y. Huang, and Valeria Della-Maggiore.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BrainPlasticity #Neurobiology #LearningAndMemory #Neuroimaging #SANDI #DTI #MotorSkillLearning #DiffusionMRI #Hippocampus #Cortex
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DATE: July 24, 2026 at 08:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Learning a new skill triggers both temporary cell swelling and lasting structural growth in the human brain
A new study published in PLoS Biology has found that learning a new motor skill sets off two different types of cellular changes in the human brain. The findings suggest that the brain experiences a temporary swelling of cell bodies followed by a long-lasting growth of cellular extensions in specific regions. This dual response offers a deeper understanding of how the human brain physically adapts when we learn something new.
Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to remodel its physical structure in response to new experiences. This biological process supports learning and memory, and it also influences a person’s vulnerability to neurological conditions.
Valeria Della-Maggiore, an associate professor at the National University of San Martin and the University of Buenos Aires, led the research. She also serves as an adjunct professor at McGill University and directs the Physiology of Action Lab.
“Structural plasticity, the brain’s ability to remodel its connections in response to experience, is fundamental to learning and memory and shapes development and degenerative disorders,” she told PsyPost. She explained that most human studies over the past two decades have used standard MRI protocols to detect changes in brain microstructure, assuming these changes were always plastic in nature.
“Yet animal studies show that cells may undergo structural changes that do not always reflect synapse remodeling,” Della-Maggiore said. “To disambiguate plastic from non-plastic processes, we combined ultra-high-gradient diffusion MRI with SANDI, a biophysical model that allows making inferences at the level of cellular compartments, that is, cell bodies and cell processes.”
To measure structural changes in humans, scientists have typically relied on a brain scanning technique called diffusion tensor imaging, or DTI. This method measures how water molecules move and diffuse through brain tissue. By tracking this water movement, scientists can infer changes in the brain’s microscopic structure.
DTI blends the signals from various parts of the brain tissue together. “DTI captures a single, global signal: it can tell you that a change in one region lasts longer than in another, but not what underlies it,” Della-Maggiore said. Because of this blending, the technique cannot easily distinguish between a permanent structural change and a temporary biological reaction.
To address this limitation, the authors utilized highly sensitive magnetic resonance imaging paired with the specialized mathematical model called Soma and Neurite Density Imaging, or SANDI. Rather than grouping all tissue signals together, SANDI separates the scanning signals into three distinct categories. These categories include the cell bodies, the cellular extensions called neurites, and the extracellular fluid surrounding the cells.
“This study was only possible through a genuinely multidisciplinary effort, in which neuroscientists, experts in diffusion MRI, mathematicians and modeling specialists, and engineers worked together around a single scientific question,” Della-Maggiore said.
The collaboration included her lab along with the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre. “Bringing these different forms of expertise into alignment is what made it possible to extract biological insight from a non-invasive measurement, something no single discipline could have achieved on its own,” she added.
The study included 29 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 36, consisting of 16 females and 13 males. All participants were right-handed and reported no history of neurological or psychiatric conditions. They completed a motor sequence learning task involving typing a specific five-number sequence on a keyboard using the four fingers of their left, non-dominant hand. The exact sequence was 4-1-3-2-4, with the number 4 representing the index finger and the number 1 representing the pinky finger.
Participants were instructed to type the sequence as quickly and accurately as possible. They completed 15 practice blocks of this finger-tapping sequence. Each block consisted of 12 sequences and was separated by 25 seconds of rest. The entire training session took about 15 to 20 minutes.
To assess how well the participants retained the skill overnight, they were asked to complete eight additional practice blocks 24 hours later. To track brain activity and physical changes, the scientists used an ultra-high-gradient MRI scanner, which offers exceptional sensitivity for capturing microscopic tissue details. They collected functional MRI scans to measure active brain regions during the task. They also collected advanced diffusion MRI scans at three specific points: before the practice session began, 30 minutes after the practice ended, and 24 hours later.
The behavioral data showed that participants improved their typing speed and accuracy primarily during the short rest periods between practice blocks. The functional brain scans aligned with this observation, revealing increased activity in the brain’s memory and motor regions during these brief breaks. However, the most specific discoveries emerged from the SANDI model used to track cellular changes.
“When you learn a new skill, two processes of different spatial and temporal dynamics take place in your brain at the cellular level,” Della-Maggiore said. “One is transient and occurs at the level of cell bodies, which increase in size across all brain regions engaged by the task. The other is persistent, confined to the regions specifically involved in learning, and occurs at the level of cell processes, compatible with structural plasticity.”
The researchers found that DTI scans alone missed a layer of detail. “Our approach revealed something DTI cannot see, that the regions showing lasting changes also carry a transient response,” Della-Maggiore explained. “In other words, beneath what DTI reads as a single persistent effect, there are in fact two distinct processes unfolding on different timescales.”
Specifically, the researchers found a temporary increase in the apparent density of cell bodies across all the brain areas engaged by the task. These areas included the hippocampus, the primary motor cortex, the posterior parietal cortex, and the precuneus. This physical change was observed 30 minutes after the practice session. By the 24-hour mark, the cell bodies in these regions had returned to their normal baseline size.
“The second [surprise] was the spatial pattern: a transient change at the level of the cell body appeared uniformly across all regions engaged by learning, whereas the sustained change in cellular processes was confined to those regions specific to the learned skill,” Della-Maggiore said. “It was this dissociation, in both space and time, that let us infer different biological processes underlying these responses: a homeostatic process such as swelling of cell bodies induced by increased neuronal activity, and cell-process remodeling mediating genuine structural plasticity.”
The authors propose that this short-lived cell expansion is a temporary biological reaction to balance out intense cellular activity. When brain cells are highly active, they experience an imbalance of ions. To correct this imbalance, water flows into the cells, causing them to temporarily swell.
In addition to the temporary swelling, the SANDI model revealed a second, longer-lasting change in specific areas of the brain. The researchers observed a sustained increase in the density of cellular extensions in the precuneus and the posterior parietal cortex. These cellular extensions include structures like dendrites and axons, which connect different brain cells to one another.
This increase in cellular extensions persisted a full day after the learning task. The researchers noticed a direct link to task performance. “Notably, the more a person improved, the stronger this second change was,” Della-Maggiore said.
Interestingly, this long-lasting structural remodeling did not occur in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is a brain region known for helping encode new memories early in the learning process. The findings suggest that while the hippocampus is engaged initially, the long-term structural changes required to retain a motor skill happen in the outer layers of the brain, known as the cortex.
“The broader message is that a change in brain structure is not, in itself, evidence of learning-related plasticity,” Della-Maggiore said. “Being able to separate these processes in a living brain, non-invasively, provides something that did not exist before in human neuroscience: a mechanistic window onto brain plasticity, allowing us to begin inferring biological mechanisms directly in humans rather than relying on animal models.”
Interpreting these findings requires acknowledging a few limitations related to the scanning technology. The SANDI model estimates relative signal fractions of cell components rather than providing a direct physical measurement of cellular volume. The technique relies on specific mathematical assumptions about how water moves in the brain.
“Our approach does not quantify cells or cell processes directly,” Della-Maggiore explained. “It infers how much different cellular components contribute to the MRI signal, based on a biophysical model whose interpretation is grounded in animal and histological evidence.”
She added that referring to changes in cell bodies or cell processes involves principled inferences, not microscopic observations. “The strength of the method lies in tracking how these signals evolve over time, compared against the person’s own baseline,” she said.
The study focused on a specific finger-tapping task in a small group of healthy young adults. Different types of learning, such as studying a new language or solving complex math problems, might engage different cellular mechanisms. “Our broader aim is to keep refining this approach to probe the biological mechanisms of plasticity in ever greater detail, directly in humans,” Della-Maggiore said.
The researchers hope to apply this multi-compartment imaging approach to other areas of neuroscience. “Beyond learning, distinguishing genuine, adaptive remodeling from other processes could prove valuable in contexts such as development, aging, and disease, including conditions like neurodegeneration or neuroinflammation, where telling apart healthy from harmful structural change is both difficult and clinically important,” she said.
“The results move the field beyond descriptive diffusion changes toward mechanistic inference, which is particularly valuable for studies of learning, development, and disease,” Della-Maggiore concluded.
The study, “Learning engages transient and sustained cellular mechanisms in the human brain,” was authored by Guillermina Griffa, Marco Palombo, Abraham Yeffal, Hong-Hsi Lee, Agustin Solano, Susie Y. Huang, and Valeria Della-Maggiore.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BrainPlasticity #Neurobiology #LearningAndMemory #Neuroimaging #SANDI #DTI #MotorSkillLearning #DiffusionMRI #Hippocampus #Cortex
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DATE: July 21, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Relying on reminders could be weakening your memory skills
URL: https://www.psypost.org/relying-on-reminders-could-be-weakening-your-memory-skills/
Using reminders can make it easier to remember future tasks, but relying on them may also reduce the brain’s opportunity to learn how to remember on its own, according to new research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
Most people use digital reminders every day. Smartphones, smartwatches, and calendar alerts help us remember appointments and deadlines, reducing the mental effort needed to keep track of future intentions. Psychologists refer to this strategy as cognitive offloading—transferring some of the brain’s workload to an external aid. Previous research has shown that reminders improve immediate performance, but much less is known about whether they influence our ability to remember independently in the future.
The researchers wanted to investigate whether reminders simply provide temporary assistance or whether they also change the learning processes that normally strengthen prospective memory—the ability to remember to carry out intended actions later.
Led by Craig Fellers from the University of California, Santa Cruz, the research team conducted two online experiments. In the first, 130 undergraduate students took part, with data from 108 participants included after applying predefined exclusion criteria.
Participants completed an ongoing word task while simultaneously remembering two prospective memory tasks (such as pressing the spacebar when they saw a word with three syllables). In one condition, participants remembered both tasks using their own memory. In the offloading condition, one of the memory tasks was supported by a highly noticeable reminder displayed in bold text, while the other still had to be remembered internally.
After completing the first phase, all participants repeated the task again, but this time without any reminders, allowing the researchers to examine whether earlier reminder use affected later memory performance. The researchers then conducted a second experiment with 280 participants using a different version of the task to replicate the findings.
As expected, reminders greatly improved performance while they were available. Participants almost never forgot the task supported by the reminder. However, the researchers found no evidence that removing one memory burden allowed participants to perform better on the other memory task they still had to remember themselves. In fact, in the second experiment, when the reminders were made even more explicit, performance on the non-offloaded memory task actually worsened.
The most important finding emerged after the reminders disappeared. Participants who had previously relied on reminders remembered significantly fewer future tasks than those who had never used reminders. Their performance was even lower than the baseline level achieved by participants who had relied solely on their own memory throughout the study. This suggests that they had learned less rather than simply losing the benefit of reminders.
The authors concluded: “While reminders can be a powerful tool for ensuring immediate task completion, they are not cognitively neutral. They can undermine the very practice required to develop durable, internal memory skills, suggesting a fundamental trade-off between immediate convenience and long-term learning and skill acquisition.”
The findings fit with a broader idea in psychology known as desirable difficulties. Although remembering without assistance is more mentally demanding, that extra effort may strengthen memory over time. By removing much of this effort, reminders may prevent people from developing stronger internal memory skills.
The authors caution that the study was conducted online using university students, so the results may not fully reflect how people use reminder apps in everyday life. For instance, older adults may rely on offloading differently than students. The researchers also examined relatively short-term memory performance, leaving open the question of whether long-term reliance on digital reminders produces similar effects.
The study, “Offloading Reduces Prospective Memory Learning,” was authored by Craig Fellers and Benjamin C. Storm.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/relying-on-reminders-could-be-weakening-your-memory-skills/
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #memoryeducation #cognitivedumping #reminders #offloading #prospectivememory #desirabledifficulties #memoryskills #learningandmemory #digitalwellbeing #memorytraining
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DATE: July 21, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Relying on reminders could be weakening your memory skills
URL: https://www.psypost.org/relying-on-reminders-could-be-weakening-your-memory-skills/
Using reminders can make it easier to remember future tasks, but relying on them may also reduce the brain’s opportunity to learn how to remember on its own, according to new research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
Most people use digital reminders every day. Smartphones, smartwatches, and calendar alerts help us remember appointments and deadlines, reducing the mental effort needed to keep track of future intentions. Psychologists refer to this strategy as cognitive offloading—transferring some of the brain’s workload to an external aid. Previous research has shown that reminders improve immediate performance, but much less is known about whether they influence our ability to remember independently in the future.
The researchers wanted to investigate whether reminders simply provide temporary assistance or whether they also change the learning processes that normally strengthen prospective memory—the ability to remember to carry out intended actions later.
Led by Craig Fellers from the University of California, Santa Cruz, the research team conducted two online experiments. In the first, 130 undergraduate students took part, with data from 108 participants included after applying predefined exclusion criteria.
Participants completed an ongoing word task while simultaneously remembering two prospective memory tasks (such as pressing the spacebar when they saw a word with three syllables). In one condition, participants remembered both tasks using their own memory. In the offloading condition, one of the memory tasks was supported by a highly noticeable reminder displayed in bold text, while the other still had to be remembered internally.
After completing the first phase, all participants repeated the task again, but this time without any reminders, allowing the researchers to examine whether earlier reminder use affected later memory performance. The researchers then conducted a second experiment with 280 participants using a different version of the task to replicate the findings.
As expected, reminders greatly improved performance while they were available. Participants almost never forgot the task supported by the reminder. However, the researchers found no evidence that removing one memory burden allowed participants to perform better on the other memory task they still had to remember themselves. In fact, in the second experiment, when the reminders were made even more explicit, performance on the non-offloaded memory task actually worsened.
The most important finding emerged after the reminders disappeared. Participants who had previously relied on reminders remembered significantly fewer future tasks than those who had never used reminders. Their performance was even lower than the baseline level achieved by participants who had relied solely on their own memory throughout the study. This suggests that they had learned less rather than simply losing the benefit of reminders.
The authors concluded: “While reminders can be a powerful tool for ensuring immediate task completion, they are not cognitively neutral. They can undermine the very practice required to develop durable, internal memory skills, suggesting a fundamental trade-off between immediate convenience and long-term learning and skill acquisition.”
The findings fit with a broader idea in psychology known as desirable difficulties. Although remembering without assistance is more mentally demanding, that extra effort may strengthen memory over time. By removing much of this effort, reminders may prevent people from developing stronger internal memory skills.
The authors caution that the study was conducted online using university students, so the results may not fully reflect how people use reminder apps in everyday life. For instance, older adults may rely on offloading differently than students. The researchers also examined relatively short-term memory performance, leaving open the question of whether long-term reliance on digital reminders produces similar effects.
The study, “Offloading Reduces Prospective Memory Learning,” was authored by Craig Fellers and Benjamin C. Storm.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/relying-on-reminders-could-be-weakening-your-memory-skills/
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #memoryeducation #cognitivedumping #reminders #offloading #prospectivememory #desirabledifficulties #memoryskills #learningandmemory #digitalwellbeing #memorytraining
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"Small circuit principles for learning in large worlds", Raman et al. 2026
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.13.688216v2 -
"Small circuit principles for learning in large worlds", Raman et al. 2026
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.13.688216v2 -
Related summary of mitochondrial findings in various papers:
https://mastodon.social/@thetransmitter/116856257359231323 -
Related summary of mitochondrial findings in various papers:
https://mastodon.social/@thetransmitter/116856257359231323 -
"Visceral signaling of post-ingestive malaise directs memory updating in Drosophila", Senapati et al. 2026 (Waddell's lab)
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.21.683769v1
#neuroscience #Drosophila #LearningAndMemory
2/2
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"Visceral signaling of post-ingestive malaise directs memory updating in Drosophila", Senapati et al. 2026 (Waddell's lab)
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.21.683769v1
#neuroscience #Drosophila #LearningAndMemory
2/2
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"Aversive learning hijacks a brain sugar sensor to consolidate memory", Francés et al. 2026 (Preat's and Plaçais' lab).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10306-z"an internal sugar sensor in the Drosophila brain6 is involved in memory consolidation [...] By revealing a mechanism of non-homeostatic hunger and its critical relevance for memory consolidation, our results provide a neural circuit basis, and a cognitive value, to a behaviour akin to emotional eating."
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"Aversive learning hijacks a brain sugar sensor to consolidate memory", Francés et al. 2026 (Preat's and Plaçais' lab).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10306-z"an internal sugar sensor in the Drosophila brain6 is involved in memory consolidation [...] By revealing a mechanism of non-homeostatic hunger and its critical relevance for memory consolidation, our results provide a neural circuit basis, and a cognitive value, to a behaviour akin to emotional eating."
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“This paper presents fundamental research showing that the acquisition and expression of Pavlovian conditioned responding are lawfully related to temporal characteristics of an animal's conditioning experience. It showcases a rigorous experimental design, several different approaches to data analysis, careful consideration of prior literature, and a thorough introduction. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling. The paper will have a general appeal to those interested in the behavioral and neural analysis of Pavlovian conditioning.”
“Information, certainty, and learning”, Harris and Gallistel, 2026
https://elifesciences.org/articles/102155 -
“This paper presents fundamental research showing that the acquisition and expression of Pavlovian conditioned responding are lawfully related to temporal characteristics of an animal's conditioning experience. It showcases a rigorous experimental design, several different approaches to data analysis, careful consideration of prior literature, and a thorough introduction. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling. The paper will have a general appeal to those interested in the behavioral and neural analysis of Pavlovian conditioning.”
“Information, certainty, and learning”, Harris and Gallistel, 2026
https://elifesciences.org/articles/102155 -
"Short-term memory errors are strongly associated with a drift in neural activity in the posterior parietal cortex", Joon Ho Choi et al. 2025 (Jong-Cheol Rah's lab).
"Using 2-photon calcium imaging in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) of mice performing a delayed match-to-sample task, we identified a subset of PPC neurons exhibiting both directional and temporal selectivity. Contrary to the hypothesis that STM errors primarily stem from mis-encoding during the sample phase, our findings reveal that these errors are more strongly associated with a drift in neural activity during the delay period. This drift leads to a gradual divergence away from the correct representation, ultimately leading to incorrect behavioral responses."
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"Short-term memory errors are strongly associated with a drift in neural activity in the posterior parietal cortex", Joon Ho Choi et al. 2025 (Jong-Cheol Rah's lab).
"Using 2-photon calcium imaging in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) of mice performing a delayed match-to-sample task, we identified a subset of PPC neurons exhibiting both directional and temporal selectivity. Contrary to the hypothesis that STM errors primarily stem from mis-encoding during the sample phase, our findings reveal that these errors are more strongly associated with a drift in neural activity during the delay period. This drift leads to a gradual divergence away from the correct representation, ultimately leading to incorrect behavioral responses."
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"A temporally restricted function of the dopamine receptor Dop1R2 during memory formation", Kaldun et al. 2025 (Sprecher lab).
https://elifesciences.org/articles/99368In Kenyon cells, "loss of dop1R2 from ab or a'b' block the ability of flies to display measurable forms of longer forms of memory"
In other words, a specific dopamine receptor is now associated with long-term memory in fruit flies, and its loss does not affect short-term memory.
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"A temporally restricted function of the dopamine receptor Dop1R2 during memory formation", Kaldun et al. 2025 (Sprecher lab).
https://elifesciences.org/articles/99368In Kenyon cells, "loss of dop1R2 from ab or a'b' block the ability of flies to display measurable forms of longer forms of memory"
In other words, a specific dopamine receptor is now associated with long-term memory in fruit flies, and its loss does not affect short-term memory.
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How Neurons, Hormones, and Systems Collaborate to Power Your Feelings and Movements
#Neuroscience #BrainAndBody #ScienceExploration #Neurons #SynapticPlasticity #Hormones # NervousSystem #CellBiology #BrainFunctions #MindAndBody #MedicalScience #LearningAndMemory #Neurotransmitters #BrainHealth #ScienceEducation
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The Marvel of Auditory and Cognitive Networks Working Together in Your Brain
#AuditoryProcessing #BrainScience #NeuralNetworks #CognitiveScience #Hearing #SpeechRecognition #BrainPlasticity #CentralNervousSystem #SoundProcessing #Neuroscience #ListeningSkills #BrainHealth #AuditoryDisorders #LearningAndMemory
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Decoding the Brain: Neural Patterns Behind Thinking and Feeling
#BrainScience #Neuroscience #MindAndMemory #BrainConnections #MentalHealth #CognitiveScience #NeuralNetworks #BrainFunctions #EmotionalIntelligence #LearningAndMemory #BrainAwareness #NeuroscienceEducation
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"Individual dopaminergic neurons induce unique, yet overlapping combinations of behavioural modulations including safety learning, memory retrieval and acute locomotion" by Toshima et al. (Michael Schleyer) 2025
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.23.634646v1 -
"Individual dopaminergic neurons induce unique, yet overlapping combinations of behavioural modulations including safety learning, memory retrieval and acute locomotion" by Toshima et al. (Michael Schleyer) 2025
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.23.634646v1 -
Indeed, the field has modernly narrowed the scope of research in associative learning to just the mushroom body.
We'd have to convince Yoshi Aso, Glen Turner and Gerry Rubin, regarding the title edit. Have you written to them about this? Particularly Yoshi.
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Indeed, the field has modernly narrowed the scope of research in associative learning to just the mushroom body.
We'd have to convince Yoshi Aso, Glen Turner and Gerry Rubin, regarding the title edit. Have you written to them about this? Particularly Yoshi.
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Excessive olfactory memory in the insomniac fruit fly mutant:
"we report our surprising findings that insomniac (inc) Drosophila short sleep mutants, which lack a crucial adaptor protein for the autism-associated Cullin-3 ubiquitin ligase, exhibited excessive olfactory memory."
And then the paper goes on to inquire into the molecular basis of this, and reports:
"find that a mild attenuation of Protein Kinase A (PKA) signaling specifically rescued the sleep and longevity phenotypes of inc mutants. Surprisingly, this mild PKA signaling reduction further boosted the excessive memory in inc mutants, coupled with further exaggerated mushroom body overgrowth phenotypes."
From:
"Cognitive hyperplasticity drives insomnia", by Huang et al. (Sigrist lab) 2024
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.16.603670v1.full -
Excessive olfactory memory in the insomniac fruit fly mutant:
"we report our surprising findings that insomniac (inc) Drosophila short sleep mutants, which lack a crucial adaptor protein for the autism-associated Cullin-3 ubiquitin ligase, exhibited excessive olfactory memory."
And then the paper goes on to inquire into the molecular basis of this, and reports:
"find that a mild attenuation of Protein Kinase A (PKA) signaling specifically rescued the sleep and longevity phenotypes of inc mutants. Surprisingly, this mild PKA signaling reduction further boosted the excessive memory in inc mutants, coupled with further exaggerated mushroom body overgrowth phenotypes."
From:
"Cognitive hyperplasticity drives insomnia", by Huang et al. (Sigrist lab) 2024
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.16.603670v1.full -
Latest from Gaia Tavosanis' lab: "How does the fly mushroom body support odour categorisation and discrimination? 🧠✨ Dive into Ivy Chan's findings on how neural circuits enable complex olfactory processing in flies."
"Odour representations supporting ethology-relevant categorisation and discrimination in the Drosophila mushroom body", Chan et al. 2025 (Tavosanis' lab)
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.25.634657v1
#Drosopila #neuroscience #LearningAndMemory -
Latest from Gaia Tavosanis' lab: "How does the fly mushroom body support odour categorisation and discrimination? 🧠✨ Dive into Ivy Chan's findings on how neural circuits enable complex olfactory processing in flies."
"Odour representations supporting ethology-relevant categorisation and discrimination in the Drosophila mushroom body", Chan et al. 2025 (Tavosanis' lab)
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.25.634657v1
#Drosopila #neuroscience #LearningAndMemory -
"Driver lines for studying associative learning in Drosophila" by Shuai, Sammons et al. 2024 (Yoshi Aso's lab).
https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/94168 -
"Driver lines for studying associative learning in Drosophila" by Shuai, Sammons et al. 2024 (Yoshi Aso's lab).
https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/94168 -
@futurebird One key difference in the moth vs. the fruit fly:
"larvae trained at third instar still showed odor aversion after two molts, as fifth instars, but did not avoid the odor as adults, consistent with the idea that post-metamorphic recall involves regions of the brain that are not produced until later in larval development."
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0001736
... whereas fly larvae don't develop further brain regions during larval life.
#moths #LearningAndMemory #neuroscience #development #Drosophila
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@futurebird One key difference in the moth vs. the fruit fly:
"larvae trained at third instar still showed odor aversion after two molts, as fifth instars, but did not avoid the odor as adults, consistent with the idea that post-metamorphic recall involves regions of the brain that are not produced until later in larval development."
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0001736
... whereas fly larvae don't develop further brain regions during larval life.
#moths #LearningAndMemory #neuroscience #development #Drosophila
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"Selective consolidation of learning and memory via recall-gated plasticity", Lindsey and Litwin-Kumar, 2024.
https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/90793On forming long-term memories:
"The key component of this model is a mechanism by which a long-term learning and memory system prioritizes the storage of synaptic changes that are consistent with prior updates to the short-term system. This mechanism, which we refer to as recall-gated consolidation, has the effect of shielding long-term memory from spurious synaptic changes, enabling it to focus on reliable signals in the environment."
With a discussion including mammalian and insect brains.
#neuroscience #LearningAndMemory #RecallGatedConsolidation #CompNeurosci
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"Selective consolidation of learning and memory via recall-gated plasticity", Lindsey and Litwin-Kumar, 2024.
https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/90793On forming long-term memories:
"The key component of this model is a mechanism by which a long-term learning and memory system prioritizes the storage of synaptic changes that are consistent with prior updates to the short-term system. This mechanism, which we refer to as recall-gated consolidation, has the effect of shielding long-term memory from spurious synaptic changes, enabling it to focus on reliable signals in the environment."
With a discussion including mammalian and insect brains.
#neuroscience #LearningAndMemory #RecallGatedConsolidation #CompNeurosci
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"Beyond prediction error: 25 years of modeling the associations formed in the insect mushroom body", a review by Barbara Webb 2024.
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"Beyond prediction error: 25 years of modeling the associations formed in the insect mushroom body", a review by Barbara Webb 2024.
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"Tyramine and its Amtyr1 receptor modulate attention in honey bees (Apis mellifera)", Latshaw et al. 2013 (Brian Smith's lab).
https://elifesciences.org/articles/83348Genetics and crosses in honeybees: the patience to do these experiments is admirable. Plus electrophysiology!
#honeybees #neuroscience #LearningAndMemory #LatentInhibition
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"Tyramine and its Amtyr1 receptor modulate attention in honey bees (Apis mellifera)", Latshaw et al. 2013 (Brian Smith's lab).
https://elifesciences.org/articles/83348Genetics and crosses in honeybees: the patience to do these experiments is admirable. Plus electrophysiology!
#honeybees #neuroscience #LearningAndMemory #LatentInhibition
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Prof. Karla Kaun and her lab review "Drosophila Reward Circuits" https://oxfordre.com/neuroscience/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264086.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264086-e-495
Reviews both the adult and larval Drosophila brain circuits for feeding, sugar sensing, and associative memory, including the roles of neuromodulators and neuropeptides.
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Prof. Karla Kaun and her lab review "Drosophila Reward Circuits" https://oxfordre.com/neuroscience/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264086.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264086-e-495
Reviews both the adult and larval Drosophila brain circuits for feeding, sugar sensing, and associative memory, including the roles of neuromodulators and neuropeptides.
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Let’s bring back into the limelight Jurgen Schmidhuber’s ~2009 take on compression as the root of a lot that goes on in learning and its impact/causality on beauty, novelty, boringness/interestingness, and action selection.
“Driven by compression progress: A simple principle explains essential aspects of subjective beauty, novelty, surprise, interestingness, attention, curiosity, creativity, art, science, music, jokes” by Schmidhuber 2008. https://arxiv.org/pdf/0812.4360
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Let’s bring back into the limelight Jurgen Schmidhuber’s ~2009 take on compression as the root of a lot that goes on in learning and its impact/causality on beauty, novelty, boringness/interestingness, and action selection.
“Driven by compression progress: A simple principle explains essential aspects of subjective beauty, novelty, surprise, interestingness, attention, curiosity, creativity, art, science, music, jokes” by Schmidhuber 2008. https://arxiv.org/pdf/0812.4360
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@elduvelle @LMPrida @biorxivpreprint @cogneurophys I’m stoked that it worked out so well! The assessment followed closely the methods in Navas-Olive CNN paper https://elifesciences.org/articles/77772 using F1 (balanced accuracy) to reflect both precision and recall (i.e. sensitivity). So both FN and FPs count against the score, equally. The human raters were around .7 and the monkey data started at ~.5 and reached ~.6 (same as mouse levels!) after retraining. A pleasant surprise, given visible differences in the SWR phenotype between rodent and primate clades!
I think Andrea will post more details soon, but meanwhile, some relevant keywords for interested folks (can you think of others we should use?)
#neuroscience #MemoryReplay #learningandmemory #hippocampus #ripples #SWR #replay #cnn #lstm #openscience #hackathon #oscillations
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@elduvelle @LMPrida @biorxivpreprint @cogneurophys I’m stoked that it worked out so well! The assessment followed closely the methods in Navas-Olive CNN paper https://elifesciences.org/articles/77772 using F1 (balanced accuracy) to reflect both precision and recall (i.e. sensitivity). So both FN and FPs count against the score, equally. The human raters were around .7 and the monkey data started at ~.5 and reached ~.6 (same as mouse levels!) after retraining. A pleasant surprise, given visible differences in the SWR phenotype between rodent and primate clades!
I think Andrea will post more details soon, but meanwhile, some relevant keywords for interested folks (can you think of others we should use?)
#neuroscience #MemoryReplay #learningandmemory #hippocampus #ripples #SWR #replay #cnn #lstm #openscience #hackathon #oscillations
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"Flexible specificity of memory in Drosophila depends on a comparison between choices", by Modi et al. 2023 (Glenn Turner's lab) https://elifesciences.org/articles/80923
"A memory too specific will be useless in even a slightly different environment, while an overly general memory may lead to suboptimal choices."
"Rather than forming memories that strike a balance between specificity and generality, Drosophila can flexibly categorize a given stimulus into different groups depending on the options available."
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"Flexible specificity of memory in Drosophila depends on a comparison between choices", by Modi et al. 2023 (Glenn Turner's lab) https://elifesciences.org/articles/80923
"A memory too specific will be useless in even a slightly different environment, while an overly general memory may lead to suboptimal choices."
"Rather than forming memories that strike a balance between specificity and generality, Drosophila can flexibly categorize a given stimulus into different groups depending on the options available."
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Wow Scott—the abstract alone is like a mini neuroscience conference on learning and memory. Looking forward to reading it slowly.
Meanwhile: could you tell us about the voltage imaging? Any caveats?
#Drosophila #neuroscience #LearningAndMemory #MushroomBody #KenyonCells #engran #MultisensoryIntegration
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Wow Scott—the abstract alone is like a mini neuroscience conference on learning and memory. Looking forward to reading it slowly.
Meanwhile: could you tell us about the voltage imaging? Any caveats?
#Drosophila #neuroscience #LearningAndMemory #MushroomBody #KenyonCells #engran #MultisensoryIntegration
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Upcoming learning & memory conference: the mushroom body meeting 2023 has been announced!
When: 30th May – 1st June
Where: Göttingen, Germany
Register at: https://mushroom-body-meeting.org/registration/Organized by André Fiala, Ilona Grunwald Kadow and Yoshi Aso.
Speaker list: https://mushroom-body-meeting.org/speakers/
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Upcoming learning & memory conference: the mushroom body meeting 2023 has been announced!
When: 30th May – 1st June
Where: Göttingen, Germany
Register at: https://mushroom-body-meeting.org/registration/Organized by André Fiala, Ilona Grunwald Kadow and Yoshi Aso.
Speaker list: https://mushroom-body-meeting.org/speakers/
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Xianshuai Zeng presenting results from Project 2 at SFN 2022 in San Diego.
@SfN_Events #episodicmemory #compneuro #spatiallearning #learningandmemory