Cognition

Madeleine Finlay interviews Boston University neuroscientist Steve Ramirez about locating, activating and removing rodent memories, and possible applications in humans.

This Nature Podcast explores how anonymized banking records can reveal patterns of financial abuse and inform support for victim-survivors. A second segment examines how opposing forces within Earth’s core can change the planet’s rotation and the length of a day. Research highlights cover Mercury’s contraction and cognitive resilience in predicting Alzheimer’s dementia.

Chris Smith presents research on individual differences in fruit flies, colour-linked pupil responses in synaesthesia, and how mating patterns broaden cognitive variation in chickadees. The episode also examines which species succeed in cities and how DNA organisation changes in cancer. The publisher provides a full episode player and individual interview transcripts.

Andrea Gambarotto examines agency and intrinsic purpose in biological cognition, drawing on Hegel and contemporary theoretical biology. The conversation connects these ideas to enactivism and asks how living intelligence differs from artificial systems, including language models.

The Meletis laboratory in Neuroscience offers a postdoctoral scholarship in Solna to study neuron subtypes and circuits underlying motivation and decision-making, including mouse models of stress and mood disorders. Work combines genetic and viral labelling, in vivo imaging or optogenetics, and freely moving or head-fixed behavioural experiments in circuits such as the basal ganglia, hypothalamus and dopamine system. Single-cell profiles and connectivity maps support the research. Apply through Varbi by 13 October 2026 with a CV, publication list and one-page research summary.

A 23-month postdoctoral appointment at 0.8 FTE in Pieter Medendorp’s sensorimotor research group at the Donders Institute. The project investigates perception, movement and decisions under uncertainty through behavioural experiments and computational models. Work combines multisensory integration, Bayesian modelling and optimal control with virtual reality, wearable sensors and motion platforms, including natural navigation, orienting and reaching. The preferred start is 1 December 2026. Responsibilities may include student supervision and teaching.

The BrAIN group recruits a postdoctoral researcher for the ERC-funded BrainAlign project, investigating whether human brain activity can improve language models’ long-timescale understanding. The researcher leads the computational neuroscience work, integrates heterogeneous fMRI datasets and develops models that learn from naturalistic language comprehension. The project also uses these models to investigate language processing in the brain. Candidates need a relevant PhD, strong computational or machine-learning skills and programming experience; fMRI expertise is particularly useful. Apply through the Max Planck Postdoc Program with a CV and publications, research summary, statement of interest and up to three referees. The project advert describes rolling review; the programme’s September 2026 application window closes on 13 October at 12:00 CEST.

Postdoctoral research with Christian Doeller at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany. The group studies structured representations supporting navigation, episodic and working memory, learning and decision-making. Projects connect hippocampal population coding with knowledge representations and possible translation to Alzheimer’s disease. Approaches include high-field fMRI, MEG, EEG, virtual reality, psychophysics and computational models, including machine learning and deep neural networks. The project can be shaped around interdisciplinary interests. Applicants need a PhD in cognitive neuroscience, psychology, biology, computer science, physics or a related field, strong programming skills, an excellent academic record and interest or experience in computational modelling. The September 2026 Max Planck Postdoc Program offers at least three years of employment and structured career development. Apply through the programme portal by 13 October 2026 at 12:00 Europe/Berlin (CEST). Create an account to access Apply and submit the required CV with publications, previous-research summary and statement of interest, following the portal’s full instructions.

Navigation and memory require coordination between map-like allocentric representations and body-centered egocentric actions. Aaron Wilber examines how the parietal–retrosplenial–anterior thalamic–hippocampal network performs these transformations, and how disrupted coordination contributes to spatial deficits in aging and Alzheimer’s disease. Rat sequence-task experiments reveal bidirectional hippocampal–parietal interactions across route-centered, place and egocentric representations. Because that task does not isolate reference-frame use, the laboratory developed a freely available task separating egocentric, allocentric and transformation conditions. Validation indicates that parietal cortex and anterior thalamus are required for transformation; ongoing work examines population states associated with each condition. The talk then connects impaired hippocampal–cortical communication during sleep to navigation deficits in 3xTg-AD mice, reporting recovery of circuit function and cognition after early, circuit-targeted 40 Hz entrainment. Related investigations examine this network during waking navigation. In TgF344-AD rats, egocentric impairments appear before transformation deficits, addressing the shortage of rodent studies of reference-frame coordination in Alzheimer’s disease.

Join an international Deep Time Cognition project studying the evolution of brains, intelligence and cognition. The Edinburgh team led by Stephen Brusatte contributes palaeontology and phylogenetics, using CT scans of fossils, brain reconstructions and evolutionary datasets. The postdoctoral researcher will gather and synthesise tetrapod brain-endocast anatomy across more than 350 million years, analyse trends in brain size with Bayesian and phylogenetic methods, relate brain size to neuron counts in living species, and estimate counts in extinct taxa. The role collaborates with Lawrence Witmer and other project researchers. The appointment is full-time at 35 hours weekly, from January 2027 to 31 December 2028. Salary is £41,064–£48,822 annually. Applications close on 23 October 2026 at 23:59 UK time; interviews are planned for the week beginning 2 November.

This UniDistance Suisse event explores how research on socio-emotional skills can inform play, learning and discussion about emotions. It introduces the Emotion board game through a keynote, an interdisciplinary panel and practical activities, in collaboration with the Réseau Émotions et Éducation. Programme on 11 November 2026, Europe/Zurich (CET, UTC+01:00): 13:45 welcome; 13:50–14:05 keynote on experiencing emotions through play with Andrea Samson (UniDistance Suisse) and Nicolas Bressoud (HEP-VS); 14:05 film; 14:15–15:00 panel with Michele Ursprung (Canal9), David Sander (CISA and University of Geneva), Alexandra Zaharia (UniDistance Suisse), Laura Moreno (University of Fribourg), and Hadi Barkat (Helvetiq). From 15:00–16:40, participants can move between networking and emotion activities, board-game demonstrations, and a workshop on educational play led by Ulrich Schädler, former director of the Swiss Museum of Games. Closing: 16:40–17:00. In-person venue: UniDistance Suisse, Schinerstrasse 18, 3900 Brig, Switzerland. Register through the event page's public registration form.

This public discussion examines the factors that help preserve brain health during aging. Researchers working on neuroscience, brain stimulation, the microbiome and brain health consider how stress, everyday behavior and social and environmental conditions can affect resilience over a lifetime. The panel discusses emerging evidence about early vulnerability, possible interventions through lifestyle changes and stress management, and more targeted approaches. It also addresses the limits of current knowledge and the uncertainties that remain when translating these findings into ways to protect cognitive health.