MSense 
Distinct hippocampus codes for contextual cueing
Siyi Chen’s brain-imaging study in NeuroImage shows the anterior hippocampus encoding links between a repeated context and the target, the posterior hippocampus encoding relations among …
Jan 5, 2026Topics
Our research spans three questions about how the mind makes sense of the world. How does the brain construct the experience of time — and why does it sometimes get it wrong? How do we learn to focus on what matters and ignore what doesn’t? And how does the brain combine prior knowledge with new evidence to form perceptual beliefs? Explore each topic below.
Our newest studies ask how the brain turns the regularities of a scene into efficient search, and what happens when a regularity stops paying off. Imaging showed that the hippocampus keeps separate codes for a learned context and for its predictive link to the target, and EEG revealed distinct lateralised signatures for guidance toward a predicted target versus suppression of a familiar distractor layout. Distractors that share the target's critical features summon attention yet fail to engage it. People learn dynamic cross-trial rules in search only once they become aware of them. New preprints connect distractor suppression to environmental volatility, pre-stimulus cortical state and moment-to-moment alertness.
Latest studies
Research
Research
How Distractors Summon but Do Not Engage Attention
Shao-Yang Tsai’s high-density EEG study in Cortex shows that distractors sharing the target’s critical features capture spatial attention, marked by a larger N2pc, yet evoke no late PD, …
Sep 18, 2025
Research
Large-Scale Benchmarking Reveals Optimal Metrics for Measuring Functional Connectivity in Aging
Benchmarking 20 resting-state fMRI connectivity metrics on 1187 participants, a NeuroImage study with NICUM finds correlational and distance-based measures most sensitive to age-related connectivity …
Jul 1, 2025
Recent work tests how priors form and update, and where this differs in autism. A two-state Bayesian model of duration reproduction showed that people with autism keep their experiential priors intact but update them faster from sensory input, most of all in volatile environments. Neural correlates of precision-weighted prediction errors for colours and emotional faces did not differ between autism, ADHD and controls, and a preregistered study of emotional-valence prediction in autism within the Bayesian-brain framework appeared in Molecular Autism. A new preprint proposes precision-weighted updating as one account of serial dependence across sensory and contextual transitions.
Latest studies
Research
Domain-specific vs domain-general prediction errors
Plank and colleagues find in Imaging Neuroscience that adults with ASD, ADHD and neurotypical controls show no differences in prediction-error signals for the colors and emotions of unattended faces, …
Oct 24, 2025
Research
Atypical Prior Updating in ASD
In a duration reproduction task, individuals with ASD updated their prior expectations more strongly from each new sensory input than controls, especially in volatile settings, challenging the …
Feb 21, 2025
Research
Reference induced biases in late visual processing
Yannan Su et al. showed that an orientation reference presented after an ensemble stimulus still repels reproduced orientations, especially in a dual task, and an encoding-decoding model with …
Oct 12, 2023
Serial dependence runs through our newest timing studies: the interval you just experienced pulls your next judgement toward itself. fMRI located that trace in the putamen, where the prior duration is suppressed, rather than in visual cortex. The pull needs consistent motor responses, not shared memory alone, grows with how deeply an action is bound to the interval, and shifts with arousal. Saccades distort time in two directions, stretching the first event after the eye lands and compressing the next, and self-paced exploration of a screen compresses subjective time, which is why an hour of scrolling can feel like half.
Latest studies
Curious Minds
Where the last interval lingers: the putamen and duration serial dependence
Si Cheng’s fMRI study in NeuroImage: Reports finds that the previous interval lingers in the putamen, not visual cortex, when people reproduce durations, and that task switching recruits …
Oct 5, 2026
Curious Minds
How does saccade distort the time we experience?
Lingyue Chen’s study in Psychological Research shows that a saccade not only stretches the first event seen afterwards but also compresses the next one, a tug-of-war that intensifies the …
Apr 24, 2025
Research
How tasks shape temporal sequential dependence
Dr. Si Cheng and colleagues show in Psychological Research that duration judgments drift toward the previous trial, and this pull grows when consecutive trials both require reproduction, but not in a …
Aug 28, 2024