We are excited to be presenting new studies and cool findings! Check out Mateja’s poster on Tuesday and Melisa’s talk on Wednesday! Melisa will also be presenting a poster as part of her SfN trainee professional development award! Congratulations!

​Congrats to Dr. Emily Heffernan for successfully defending her PhD thesis! Emily's PhD studies have provided valuable insights into the attentional and neural mechanisms underlying the learning of surprising categorical information. Emily is now a postdoctoral fellow in the APPLY lab at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where she is investigating digital readability. We are all very proud of you, Dr. Heffernan!

Melisa gave an excellent data blitz (and was an outstanding Mack Lab representative) at this year's CEMS. She presented her work on the functional footprints of hippocampal pathways in category learning. Well done, Melisa!

Mack Lab poster presentations at VSS this year!
​
Saturday, May 18, 2024, 8:30 am – 12:30 pm

• Investigating the representational transformations underlying the learning of exceptions in visual categories
• Dory Xie, Emily Q. Wang, Yao Chen, Michael L. Mack

Saturday, May 18, 2024, 2:45 – 6:45 pm

• Mapping neural similarity spaces for scenes with generative adversarial networks
• Gaeun Son, Dirk B. Walther, Michael L. Mack

​Sunday, May 19, 2024, 2:45 – 6:45 pm

• EEG-based decoding of shapes and their categories in visual working memory
• Frida Printzlau, Olya Bulatova, Michael Mack, Keisuke Fukuda

Monday, May 20, 2024, 8:30 am – 12:30 pm

• Crossing category boundaries: Perceptual hysteresis for scenes even with endpoint preview
• Huiqin Chen, Mei Yang, Gaeun Son, Dirk Bernhardt-Walther​​

Dory Xie published her first paper in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. In this work, Dory used novel computational modelling & behavioural approaches to show how selective pattern differentiation and integration support learning and generalization of category exceptions. One interesting wrinkle in the data is that latent representational spaces of category items based on a computational model (thanks again, SUSTAIN!) differ from participants' similarity ratings. Indeed, whereas the model's latent space shows that category exceptions are differentiated from items that follow category regularities, explicit similarity ratings suggest participants are simply grouping exceptions with their respective category. Maybe similarity ratings don't reveal cognition's latent spaces?

Read it here:  https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-024-02501-8

The Mack Lab will be all over CNS this year!

Saturday

• Data blitz session 2, 1-2:30pm
  ​Talks by Emily Heffernan and Gaeun Son

Sunday

• Poster session B, 8-10am
  
  • B151: "Cross-participant neural alignment of attentional states during encoding is linked to better memory in adults and children"
    Sagana Vijayarajah, Margaret Schlichting
    
  • B153: "Menstrual cycle and perceived stress predict performance on the mnemonic similarity"
    Mateja Perovic, Michael Mack
• Poster session C, 5-7pm
  
  • ​C50: "Interrogating brain engagement as a function of exception learning performance"
    Emily Heffernan, Michael Mack
  • C53: "An edge-centric approach to discerning the neural networks underlying event script processing"
    Yongzhen Xie, Alexander Barnett
    

Monday

• Poster session D, 8-10am
  • D2: "EEG-based decoding of stimulus shapes and their categories in working memory"
    Frida Printzlau, Olya Bulatova, Keisuke Fukuda, Michael Mack
  • D74: "Learning exceptions to category rules is supported by distinct white matter networks"
    Melisa Gumus, Nahal Alizadeh Saghati , Michael Mack
  • D124: "Identifying the neural networks that support categorization using brain-informed drift diffusion modelling
    Victoria Liu, Michael Mack

Tuesday

• Poster session F, 8-10am
  • F69: "Effects of BDNF and COMT genetic polymorphism on rule plus-exception category learning at two stages of the menstrual cycle"
    Shreeansha Bhattarai, Mateja Perovic, Cathlin Han, Janice Hou, Yao Chen, Michael Mack
  • F144: "Mapping neural similarity spaces for scenes with generative adversarial networks"
    Gaeun Son, Dirk B. Walther, Michael L. Mack

Learning regularities and exceptions are supported by distinct hippocampal pathways as revealed by diffusion-weighted functional footprints
Wed., Nov 15, 8am-12pm, Poster SS25
Melisa Gumus is presenting a poster at SfN on an exploratory method we call pathway footprints! Can you use white matter pathways to constrain where to look for behaviourally relevant functional activation? If you're looking in the hippocampus, the answer seems to be yes! To learn more, see Melisa at SS25 on Nov. 15!