Hippocampal CA1 activity correlated with the distance to the goal and navigation performance (2017)
Journal Article
Spiers, H. J., Olafsdottir, H. F., & Lever, C. (2018). Hippocampal CA1 activity correlated with the distance to the goal and navigation performance. Hippocampus, 28(9), 644-658. https://doi.org/10.1002/hipo.22813

Coding the distance to a future goal is an important function of a neural system supporting navigation. While some evidence indicates the hippocampus increases activity with proximity to the goal, others have found activity to decrease with proximity... Read More about Hippocampal CA1 activity correlated with the distance to the goal and navigation performance.

A biphasic reduction in a measure of palatability following sucrose consumption in mice (2017)
Journal Article
Strickland, J. A., Austen, J. M., & Sanderson, D. J. (2018). A biphasic reduction in a measure of palatability following sucrose consumption in mice. Physiology & Behavior, 184, 129-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2017.11.019

Consumption of foods results in a transient reduction in hedonic value that influences the extent and nature of feeding behavior. The time course of this effect, however, is poorly specified. In an initial experiment, using an analysis of the microst... Read More about A biphasic reduction in a measure of palatability following sucrose consumption in mice.

Vision (2017)
Book Chapter
Nardini, M. (2017). Vision. In B. Hopkins, E. Geangu, & S. Linkenauger (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of child development, 2nd edition (364-374). (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press

Ventricular myocardium development and the role of connexins in the human fetal heart (2017)
Journal Article
Pervolaraki, E., Dachtler, J., Anderson, R., & Holden, A. (2017). Ventricular myocardium development and the role of connexins in the human fetal heart. Scientific Reports, 7(1), Article 12272. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11129-9

The developmental timeline of the human heart remains elusive. The heart takes on its characteristic four chambered appearance by ~56 days gestational age (DGA). However, owing to the complexities (both technical and logistical) of exploring developm... Read More about Ventricular myocardium development and the role of connexins in the human fetal heart.

Reconciling the different faces of hippocampal theta: The role of theta oscillations in cognitive, emotional and innate behaviors (2017)
Journal Article
Korotkova, T., Ponomarenko, A., Monaghan, C. K., Poulter, S. L., Cacucci, F., Wills, T., …Lever, C. (2017). Reconciling the different faces of hippocampal theta: The role of theta oscillations in cognitive, emotional and innate behaviors. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 85, 65-80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.09.004

The theta oscillation (5–10 Hz) is a prominent behavior-specific brain rhythm. This review summarizes studies showing the multifaceted role of theta rhythm in cognitive functions, including spatial coding, time coding and memory, exploratory locomoti... Read More about Reconciling the different faces of hippocampal theta: The role of theta oscillations in cognitive, emotional and innate behaviors.

Geometric Module. (2017)
Book Chapter
McGregor, A. (2017). Geometric Module. In J. Vonk, & T. Shackleford (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_895-1

The concept of cognitive modularity is crucial to our understanding of the architecture of the mind. One view is that psychological processes such as learning, perception, memory, and judgment are domain general such that they are able to interact wi... Read More about Geometric Module..

GluA1 AMPAR subunit deletion reduces the hedonic response to sucrose but leaves satiety and conditioned responses intact (2017)
Journal Article
Austen, J. M., Sprengel, R., & Sanderson, D. J. (2017). GluA1 AMPAR subunit deletion reduces the hedonic response to sucrose but leaves satiety and conditioned responses intact. Scientific Reports, 7(1), Article 7424. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-07542-9

The GluA1 subunit of the AMPA receptor has been implicated in schizophrenia. While GluA1 is important for cognition, it is not clear what the role of GluA1 is in hedonic responses that are relevant to the negative symptoms of disorders such as schizo... Read More about GluA1 AMPAR subunit deletion reduces the hedonic response to sucrose but leaves satiety and conditioned responses intact.

Cholinergic input to the hippocampus is not required for a model of episodic memory in the rat, even with multiple consecutive events (2017)
Journal Article
Seel, S., Eacott, M., Langston, R., & Easton, A. (2018). Cholinergic input to the hippocampus is not required for a model of episodic memory in the rat, even with multiple consecutive events. Behavioural Brain Research, 354, 48-54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2017.06.001

Previous work has shown that depletion of the cholinergic input to the hippocampus produces no impairment in an episodic (what-where-which) memory task in rats. However, in contrast a where-which task was significantly impaired. Models of acetylcholi... Read More about Cholinergic input to the hippocampus is not required for a model of episodic memory in the rat, even with multiple consecutive events.

The impact of semantically congruent and incongruent visual information on auditory object recognition across development (2017)
Journal Article
Thomas, R., Nardini, M., & Mareschal, D. (2017). The impact of semantically congruent and incongruent visual information on auditory object recognition across development. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 162, 72-88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.04.020

The ability to use different sensory signals in conjunction confers numerous advantages on perception. Multisensory perception in adults is influenced by factors beyond low-level stimulus properties such as semantic congruency. Sensitivity to semanti... Read More about The impact of semantically congruent and incongruent visual information on auditory object recognition across development.

Altered balance of excitatory and inhibitory learning in a genetically modified mouse model of glutamatergic dysfunction relevant to schizophrenia (2017)
Journal Article
Sanderson, D. J., Lee, A., Sprengel, R., Seeburg, P. H., Harrison, P. J., & Bannerman, D. M. (2017). Altered balance of excitatory and inhibitory learning in a genetically modified mouse model of glutamatergic dysfunction relevant to schizophrenia. Scientific Reports, 7(1), Article 1765. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-01925-8

The GluA1 AMPAR subunit (encoded by the Gria1 gene) has been implicated in schizophrenia. Gria1 knockout in mice results in recently experienced stimuli acquiring aberrantly high salience. This suggests that GluA1 may be important for learning that i... Read More about Altered balance of excitatory and inhibitory learning in a genetically modified mouse model of glutamatergic dysfunction relevant to schizophrenia.

The group II metabotropic glutamate receptor agonist LY354740 and the D2 receptor antagonist haloperidol reduce locomotor hyperactivity but fail to rescue spatial working memory in GluA1 knockout mice (2017)
Journal Article
Boerner, T., Bygrave, A., Chen, J., Fernando, A., Jackson, S., Barkus, C., …Sanderson, D. J. (2017). The group II metabotropic glutamate receptor agonist LY354740 and the D2 receptor antagonist haloperidol reduce locomotor hyperactivity but fail to rescue spatial working memory in GluA1 knockout mice. European Journal of Neuroscience, 45(7), 912-921. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.13539

Group II metabotropic glutamate receptor agonists have been suggested as potential anti-psychotics, at least in part, based on the observation that the agonist LY354740 appeared to rescue the cognitive deficits caused by non-competitive N-methyl-D-as... Read More about The group II metabotropic glutamate receptor agonist LY354740 and the D2 receptor antagonist haloperidol reduce locomotor hyperactivity but fail to rescue spatial working memory in GluA1 knockout mice.

Development of allocentric spatial recall from new viewpoints in virtual reality (2017)
Journal Article
Negen, J., Heywood-Everett, E., Roome, H., & Nardini, M. (2018). Development of allocentric spatial recall from new viewpoints in virtual reality. Developmental Science, 21(1), Article e12496. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12496

Using landmarks and other scene features to recall locations from new viewpoints is a critical skill in spatial cognition. In an immersive virtual reality task, we asked children 3.5–4.5 years old to remember the location of a target using various cu... Read More about Development of allocentric spatial recall from new viewpoints in virtual reality.

Incidental context information increases recollection (2017)
Journal Article
Ameen-Ali, K., Norman, L., Eacott, M., & Easton, A. (2017). Incidental context information increases recollection. Learning & Memory, 24(3), 136-139. https://doi.org/10.1101/lm.042622.116

The current study describes a receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) task for human participants based on the spontaneous recognition memory paradigms typically used with rodents. Recollection was significantly higher when an object was in the same... Read More about Incidental context information increases recollection.

Multisensory cue combination after sensory loss: audio-visual localization in patients with progressive retinal disease (2017)
Journal Article
Garcia, S., Jones, P., Reeve, E., Michaelides, M., Rubin, G., & Nardini, M. (2017). Multisensory cue combination after sensory loss: audio-visual localization in patients with progressive retinal disease. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 43(4), 729-740. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000344

Human adults can combine perceptual estimates from different senses to minimize uncertainty, by taking a reliability-weighted average (the maximum likelihood estimate, MLE). Although research has shown that healthy human adults reweight estimates as... Read More about Multisensory cue combination after sensory loss: audio-visual localization in patients with progressive retinal disease.

Auditory Localisation Biases Increase with Sensory Uncertainty (2017)
Journal Article
Garcia, S., Jones, P., Rubin, G., & Nardini, M. (2017). Auditory Localisation Biases Increase with Sensory Uncertainty. Scientific Reports, 7, Article 40567. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep40567

Psychophysical studies have frequently found that adults with normal hearing exhibit systematic errors (biases) in their auditory localisation judgments. Here we tested (i) whether systematic localisation errors could reflect reliance on prior knowle... Read More about Auditory Localisation Biases Increase with Sensory Uncertainty.