Qihong (Q) Lu

I’m thrilled to announce that I will start as a presidential assistant professor in Neuroscience at the City U of Hong Kong in Jan 2026! I have RA, PhD, and postdoc positions available! Come work with me on neural network models + experiments on human memory! RT appreciated! (1/5)

Medial PFC interacts with the hippocampus to retrieve context-congruent memories.. but HOW?? was what started this. Simulating mPFC-HIP🧠, we designed an RNN🤖 that retrieves memories similar in context, on top of self-attention. It learns to retrieve like humans faster! arxiv.org/abs/2609.37791

What kind of dynamics underlie sequence working memory? In the last project of my PhD we developed and analysed RNNs fitted to multi-session single-unit data of macaques. Now out on: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... With @jakhmack.bsky.social and data from Chen et al., Neuron 2024. [1/4]

New lab preprint! @khoudary.bsky.social presents a tour-de-force: a new model of how uncertain expectations should help resolve uncertain sensations, supported by re-analysis of four experiments in monkeys (behavior, ephys) and humans (behavior, fMRI, EEG, intracranial) @meganakpeters.bsky.social

Sometimes we know an experience is important in the moment. Other times, its importance only becomes clear after the fact. Do these two cases have different consequences for memory? In our new paper we found that both kinds of prioritization impact memory in different ways! doi.org/10.1162/OPMI...

Our task-switching paper is now out at Current Biology! www.cell.com/current-biol... We find that that our brains reset to a task-neutral state between trials, providing flexibility when the upcoming task is uncertain. RNNs also learn this strategy, but only when trained to switch tasks.

The Naturalistic Cognitive Computational Neuroscience Lab is launching at UT Austin and is looking for founding members at all levels, including lab manager, PhD students, and postdocs! #NeuroJobs We will study human brain🧠 and memory & attention, using fMRI and modeling. thesonglab.github.io

42 new #fmri tutorials to accompany our new book Elements of fMRI, with @fMRIstats. Run code in both #python and #matlab in your browser to explore. 7 sections, from conceptual foundations to machine learning and AI. torwager.github.io/elements-of-...

In a recent PNAS Profile, we explore Morris Moscovitch’s influential work on how the brain stores and retrieves memories. His research reshaped our understanding of the hippocampus and revealed its role in memory. Read more: https://ow.ly/mMrQ50ZxFZ1

Fin/ check out the paper at www.nature.com/articles/s41...! Huge thanks to Pia O'Neill (new assistant prof at Dartmouth sites.dartmouth.edu/oneill-lab/) for leading this project, and to @stefanofusi.bsky.social & Daniel Salzman for the fantastic collaboration! Cover artwork matteofarinella.com/

Excited to share that my first-ever first-author paper (w/ @atabk.bsky.social @AngeliqueDelarazan @zreagh.bsky.social) is now out in PNAS! Building a story to link two objects boosts associative memory and inference, but not memory for the objects themselves. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧵

Can MEG provide a non-invasive window onto human ripple physiology during sleep? Our new preprint suggests it can. Led by the fantastic @fabian31415.bsky.social. Many thanks to our collaborators @olejensen.bsky.social , @doellerlab.bsky.social , and @tobiasstaudigl.bsky.social #Neuroskyence

This is a really interesting and important study: www.nature.com/articles/s41... However, isn't it concerning that sweeping conclusions about functional organization of cortex are being reached on the basis of a single task?

Thanks to Kshipra Guranandan, my notebook on how to design efficient fMRI experiments (for activity, connectivity and pattern analysis) is now available in Python as a Jupyter notebook (as well as previous Matlab): github.com/RikHenson/fM...

Memory palace like strategy can naturally emerge in an RNN trained to do the free recall task! Very honored to be involved in this work. Congrats again @moufanli.bsky.social :)

New preprint from the lab! “A number simplex in the human medial temporal lobe” led by @hanlin-zhu.bsky.social 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

From a great collaboration with @lorenzoposani.com, @shuqiw.bsky.social, Samuel Muscinelli, Liam Paninski, now in Nature: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hippocampal engrams configure prefrontal context representations to guide flexible decisions Impressive combo of methods to manipulate and record this process: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Provocative title ftw. (Tho it inspired @kristorpjensen.bsky.social to give a talk titled "planning in the brain: it's not what nathaniel thinks it is")

Our paper "Neural timescales from a computational perspective" is finally out in @natneuro.nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41... We discuss how computational models and methods can distill empirical observations on neural timescales into quantitative, testable theories of brain computation.

We're finally getting the tools to study replay in humans. But why bother? What can we learn from it that we don't know from rodent recordings? Our thoughts are now out in a new TICS Forum Great fun writing this w @smfleming.bsky.social + @maritpetzka.bsky.social authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

I am so excited about this finding from @pengrui-han.bsky.social and @andreadevarda.bsky.social, also with Jacob Andreas! Perhaps modularity is inevitable in intelligent systems, biological or in silico. :)

🧠 New preprint! How well can current algorithms *actually* detect neural "replay" in the human brain under absolutely optimal conditions? We built FASTIMAGES: A combined MEG + fMRI benchmark with KNOWN neural sequences, so replay-detection methods can finally be validated against a ground truth.

Our new paper is out this week in Nature Neuroscience! www.nature.com/articles/s41... We built a BCI that works with the brain's natural geometry — and we found that people could learn to play a video game with their brains in <1 hr of training. This efficiency is groundbreaking & here's why:

"Prior knowledge biases episodic memory by filling in the gaps in imprecise memories: Simulating aging effects in younger adults" New paper from @michelleramey.bsky.social Read more here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

NEW PAPER. Why do larger networks train better? "Because they contain more candidate *sub*networks that can learn the task" → lottery tickets This popular explanation uses an appealing but misleading metaphor🧵 We propose an intuitive alternative grounded in theory: escape dimensions

1/11 Happy to share our TICS paper on using the flexibility of one of the most basic cognitive functions, perception, to understand one of the most complex cognitive dysfunctions, psychiatric conditions (also my first formal work in computational psychiatry 🎉) 📄: www.cell.com/trends/cogni... 🧵 : 👇

Feeling really proud of this one: a review of Bayesian efficient coding with Máté Lengyel and Paul Bays (@bayslab.org) is now available online in TICS! authors.elsevier.com/a/1nF3i4sIRv...

What is the relationship between memorization and generalization in AI? Is there a fundamental tradeoff? In infinitefaculty.substack.com/p/memorizati... I’ve reviewed some of the evolving perspectives on memorization & generalization in machine learning, from classic perspectives through LLMs.

Super excited by this manuscript led by the amazing @brissend.bsky.social By combining fMRI, TMS, and modeling, we finally have causal evidence that the cerebellum is contributing to brain-wide working memory representations and recall performance! 1/n

🎉 WE’RE OFFICIALLY ANNOUNCING FOR 2026 🎉 On June 20, we’re bringing researchers, technologists, artists, economists, cognitive scientists, founders, academics, writers, and curious humans together in Washington, DC. 🧵

🚨 New Preprint 🚨 I’m excited to share the first paper from my postdoc. We found age differences in the timescales of neural activity in the hippocampus during movie viewing 👀 These timescales were related to memory specificity in an interesting way (spoiler: the hippocampus may not be special!?)

THE NEURAL GEOMETRY SERIES The World Inside Neural Networks www.goodfire.ai/research/the...

NEW PAPER! Here, my postdoc, Biru Dudhabhate, and I review the history of one of the most famous neuroscience hypotheses, the dopamine reward prediction error, and reflect on what made it such a major advance for the field. @uabneuro.bsky.social www.frontiersin.org/journals/com...

Because this is a NeuroAI-flavored paper, Xinyuan and I decided to make a blogpost about it: psywalkeryanxy.github.io/posts/scienc...

In collaboration with @monicarosenb.bsky.social , we showed that individual diffs in LTM encoding is uniquely predicted by inter-electrode correlations even controlling for working memory abilities. This suggests that WM & LTM encoding are separate abilities coded by different neural signatures! 1/n

New paper from the lab! "Plasticity and language in the anaesthetized human hippocampus" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The final typeset version of this paper is online now! Check out the new analysis approach that Narjes developed to track changes in event structure at multiple timescales, allowing us to see how event dynamics in a film clip change with repeated viewing

New paper out in cognition with @arikahn.bsky.social, @nathanieldaw.bsky.social, Cate Hartley, and @katenuss.bsky.social !! We show that children 👶 use predictive representations (e.g. SR) to guide their choices, providing an account of how they can make flexible choices in a changing world

New Annual Review with @nathanieldaw.bsky.social: “Planning in the Brain: It's Not What You Think It Is.” We argue that the brain's 'planning' machinery is mostly used for learning from simulated experience, and that thinking prospectively at decision time is just one special case of this process.

We're happy to release NeuralSet: a simple, fast, scalable package for Neuro-AI Supports: 🧠 fMRI, EEG, MEG, iEEG, spikes… preprocessing 💬 text 🔊 audio ▶️ video 🏞️ image… embeddings 📦 pip install neuralset 🔍 facebookresearch.github.io/neuroai/neur... 📄 kingjr.github.io/files/neural... 🧵 Details👇

Neural circuits encode prior knowledge of temporal statistics www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This is finally out as Version of Record 🎉 Read to find out how and when humans strategically switch between approaching and avoiding uncertainty with Michael Shadlen and Daphna Shohamy elifesciences.org/articles/94231 🧵:

another great paper from @mh-christiansen.bsky.social, showing that non-constituents* can be primed It's more evidence that traditional linguists were mistaken to believe memory was in short supply: Human memory is compressed, clustered, implicit and vast

Final paper of my PhD 🤗 www.nature.com/articles/s44... There is growing interest in how cognitive control may improve value-based decision making. However, we find that a recent paper overestimated the role of control in their task, leading to erroneous interpretations of dACC recordings.

We are hiring a research specialist, to start this summer! This position would be a great fit for individuals looking to get more experience in computational and cognitive neuroscience research before applying to graduate school. #neurojobs Apply here: research-princeton.icims.com/jobs/21503/r...

Does memory fade slowly, or in drops and bursts? We analyzed 728k tests from 210k people. Key finding: “stability” isn’t a trait you either have or don’t have - it’s often a time-limited state at different points in aging. Preprint "Punctuated Memory Change": 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our experiences have countless details, and it can be hard to know which matter. How can we behave effectively in the future when, right now, we don't know what we'll need? Out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com , @marcelomattar.bsky.social and I find that people solve this by using episodic memory.

Fantastic thread and a must-read for anyone working on spatial cognition.

Excited to announce a new book telling the story of mathematical approaches to studying the mind, from the origins of cognitive science to modern AI! The Laws of Thought will be published in February and is available for pre-order now.

What a privilege and a delight to work with @coltoncasto.bsky.social @ev_fedorenko and @neuranna on this new speculative piece on What it means to understand language, nicely summarized in this Tweeprint from @coltoncasto.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2511.19757