Jeff Zacks

The Center for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience at WashU is recruiting postdoctoral fellows! ctcn.wustl.edu/postdoc-fell...

The graph in this news article in Science shows just how serious is the threat to research. If you care about brains, behavior, or social phenomena, engage now before it's too late: www.science.org/content/arti...

A powerful interview with Sylvia Chou about the ongoing crisis at NIH: www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

The call for participation for the first inaugural Event Cognition Conference is live! franco.nd.edu/events/confe... franco.nd.edu/assets/67910...

Great donation opportunity benefiting Siteman Cancer Center in STL. On September 20 I'll be riding 100 miles. Pedal the Cause is an effective and efficient charity; every penny goes to research. This is especially important in the current challenging environment. www.givesignup.org/jeffz

This op-ed from Farrell, Gopnik, and Evans is right on target: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/o...

We are hiring at all ranks for an ambitious cluster of positions studying the "rules of life." This cuts across departments and disciplines--including those applying formal/computational methods or AI to brain and behavior. #WashU insideartsci.washu.edu/rules-of-life

(1/9) Preprint Alert! 🚨 New work on how the brain comprehends narratives. 🧠🎥 Are "Key Moments" - our recent line of research - truly distinct from "Event Boundaries"? We put them to the test to see if these two constructs differ from each other. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

New preprint from Tan Nguyen! Ever wanted to know why violating a schema sometimes helps memory but sometimes hurts? osf.io/preprints/ps...

Time to engage in support of effective science for humanity. @holdenthorp.bsky.social lays out the latest.

Looking forward to talking with @margulisa.bsky.social about her new book next Monday at Left Bank Books! left-bank.com/event/2026-0...

Our new paper on aging and temporal order memory (with @jzacks.bsky.social) is now out in Psych & Aging! Using a narrative paradigm, we found that older adults have preserved event-based memory organization and show greater knowledge-related benefits in temporal memory than younger adults. 🌟

New preprint from Ashwin Srinivasan! TL;DR: Giving people control over transitions in a TikTok-like interface improved subsequent memory; predictability of transitions did not. Segmentation and control: Control over transitions differentially impacts within-event memory osf.io/preprints/ps...

Applications are open for the Computational Neuroscience Next Generation Symposium, hosted by the Center for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience at WashU! Sept 14-15, 2026. ctcn.wustl.edu/2026-next-ge...

Like the basic science that gave us modern AI, effective teaching methods, and cognitive behavioral therapy? If so, the developments described here should be seriously concerning. Office hours to strategize tomorrow (4/10) at 1:30 Eastern; registration link included: fabbs.org/news/2026/04...

The Center for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience at WashU has an opening for a postdoctoral scholar! Deadline is May 1. ctcn.wustl.edu/postdoc-fell...

2/ Work with June Kim, Josh Koh, @jzacks.bsky.social, @zreagh.bsky.social, and @alexbarnett.bsky.social.

Excited to share our paper (with @jzacks.bsky.social), now out in JEP:LMC! Event boundaries sometimes disrupt temporal order memory in list-based paradigms—but what happens in narratives with more complex structures that better resemble real life? ✨ Link: psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-...

As we're hearing about exponentially increasing rates of gain in AI, this seems relevant again: www.science.org/content/blog...

The Aging & Development training program at WashU has an opening for a postdoc! psychaging.wustl.edu

This 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...

A thoughtful exposition of the liberal arts approach to the undergraduate major (no bias on my part): www.instagram.com/p/DTf7yehETmx/

🧠 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

Spotify wrapped informs me that my listening age is "deceased."

WashU responded to the White House's "compact for excellence in higher education" with a defense of core principles that was less public and less clear than it should have been. Baby steps. www.insidehighered.com/news/governa... (Requires creating a free account to read.)

Thoughtful essay about the importance of standing up to open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni...

@fabbs.org wants to hear from you about the recent NSF Graduate Research Fellowship announcement and its impacts on scientists in clinical psychology! Current or past NSF grad fellow in Clinical Psychology? tinyurl.com/36r9znke Current student who hoped to apply? tinyurl.com/yhbz3d5u

New 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...

Baccarelli was paid $700/hour for his work on a case against Tylenol. I will charge $0/hour to tell courts, FDA, and everyone else that correlations can arise from latent variables in the absence of a direct causal relationship. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

The @nsf has also decided that clinical psychology is not eligible for NSF. This is a crock of 💩 Clinical psych (actually clinical science) is a RESEARCH degree. Let’s just completely not support research training in mental health then. Bad bad bad bad decision

How does the brain🧠 make causal inferences and use memories to understand narratives🎬? We built an RNN🤖 with key-value episodic memory that learns causal relationships between events and retrieves memories like humans do! Preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... w/ @qlu.bsky.social, Tan Nguyen &👇

Short videos highlighting the science that is not getting done due to federal science cuts: www.youtube.com/shorts/2J_BW... Share them! (Thanks to Timothy Wilson and his collaborators for making these!)

New 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...

The Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (@fabbs.org) is searching for a short-term technology policy fellow. Great opportunity for a new PhD interested in policy, maybe before a research postdoc or faculty position: fabbs.org/news/2025/08...

It’s been 5️⃣ years of #BlackInNeuro! 🧠✨ Join the annual #BlackInNeuroRollCall on September 10th and tell us where you were in 2020, and where you are now! New role? New city? New degree? We want to hear it!! Post your video + use #BlackInNeuroRollCall so we can celebrate YOU!! #5YearsOfBIN

I live in rural Missouri, population 480. I travel to DC a few times a year. The President is lying.

The Supreme Court is reviewing a vitally important NIH case on its shadow docket. It is likely that the Court will back Trump, and say his (illegal) grant terminations are ok. We must speak up now. 1/

🚨ATTENTION CDC AND ALLIES!🚨 Our genes/jeans are GREEN tomorrow To see our strength and build community, we ask that you wear something 💚green💚 to work on WEDNESDAY (tomorrow) to show solidarity and readiness to defend public health. Spread the word! #courageiscontagious #spreadthecolor #wearthecolor

New review paper with Maverick Smith on improving memory for stuff people actually want to remember: doi.org/10.1177/0963...

New update today (on Senate version, House version is worse): 👎 Though overall NSF budget would remain flat, STEM education would still see a 15% cut: $1,172 --> $1,000 million From a bill report out today after the bill passed in committee yesterday: www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/do...

Another (small) update today: The analogous subcommittee in the House will now meet next Tuesday, July 15, also about NSF/NASA/NOAA budgets (link below). House has recently been more hawkish on $ than Senate, so will be interesting. Here's who to call: appropriations.house.gov/subcommittee...

Brenda Milner just turned 107. Happy birthday! On my very first day as a PI at the MNI, she was right in front of me in the cafeteria line. She was already nearly 100, and still coming to work. What a legend.

The Center for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience at WashU is recruiting postdoctoral fellows. The Center offers a unique opportunity to craft a transdisciplinary research program with an unusual degree of independence. ctcn.wustl.edu/postdoc-fell...

Thoughtful column by @marccoutanche.bsky.social about parallels between the current federal challenges to science and the history of Soviet science: www.post-gazette.com/opinion/gues...

There's one day left to submit a comment on the Trump administration's proposal to reclassify career civil service employees--including at NSF and NIH--as "at-will" political appointees. Read the @fabbs.org comment here and submit your own: fabbs.org/news/2025/06...

If you haven't been looking recently at the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (oecs.mit.edu), here's your reminder that we are a free, open access resource for learning about the science of mind. Today we are launching our new Thematic Collections to organize our growing set of articles!

Thanks @davideagleman.bsky.social for bringing me on Inner Cosmos to talk about the cognitive neuroscience of movies!

Chad Freidrichs' documentary, The Cinema Within, got a very nice review in the @nytimes.com: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/m...

🚨 A new rule would let career scientists like NSF/NIH program officers be replaced by political appointees Already 14,000+ public comments, deadline is Friday 📣 Comments can be short. Courts consider them—and scientists with NSF/NIH experience are especially impactful Speak up! shorturl.at/WKuBj