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Bernhard Spitzer

@bernhardspitzer

Interested in memory, decision making, and soul, the latter more in a musical sense. Prof at TUD and PI of the AMC group https://amc-tud.github.io. Happy on two wheels 🚲 and four strings 🎸

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05.09.2023
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Latest posts by Bernhard Spitzer @bernhardspitzer

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Long-term effects of working memory retrieval from prioritized and deprioritized states - Communications Psychology Testing items in working memory improves long-term memory, especially for deprioritized items. This benefit shows when WM retrieval requires continuous recall, suggesting self-generated reports streng...

Briefly not attending something may help you remember it later πŸͺ„: new paper led by phenomenal PhD student Frieda Born (not on Bsky) out now in Comms Psychology:

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

17.02.2026 18:26 πŸ‘ 24 πŸ” 12 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1
Illustration of the hypothesized flows of information between perception, memory and cognitive control in a conceptual model of working memory. Stimuli attributes are processed to varying degrees of abstraction and parts of these representations can be loaded into working memory under the guidance of cognitive control. Familiar stimuli such as the letter B activate visually abstract representations while less familiar stimuli are limited to sensory representations. Information can be shifted both up and down levels of the perceptual hierarchy to build either more or less abstract representations of either perceived or imagined stimuli. Working memories can be shifted into or out of the hierarchy as needed.

Illustration of the hypothesized flows of information between perception, memory and cognitive control in a conceptual model of working memory. Stimuli attributes are processed to varying degrees of abstraction and parts of these representations can be loaded into working memory under the guidance of cognitive control. Familiar stimuli such as the letter B activate visually abstract representations while less familiar stimuli are limited to sensory representations. Information can be shifted both up and down levels of the perceptual hierarchy to build either more or less abstract representations of either perceived or imagined stimuli. Working memories can be shifted into or out of the hierarchy as needed.

We recently published a theoretical review about how compositional and generative mechanisms in working memory provide a flexible engine for creative perception and imagery.

Pre-print:
osf.io/preprints/ps...

Paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

06.01.2026 19:04 πŸ‘ 86 πŸ” 34 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 1
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Full professorship in general psychology open @tudresden.bsky.social
We are a lively department with a fantastically equipped neuroimaing center. DM me with questions.
@dgps.bsky.social @dgps-fgal.bsky.social @biodgps-dgpa.bsky.social
tu-dresden.de/vacancy/12517

28.11.2025 15:40 πŸ‘ 20 πŸ” 17 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Humans can infer global relationships from local comparisons, but how do we adapt when these relationships change? New work by the brilliant @tgham.bsky.social used RL modelling to find out πŸ‘‡

19.11.2025 13:44 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

πŸ₯³ I am incredibly humbled and grateful to share that our work, "Aligning machine and human visual representations across abstraction levels," has been published today in @nature.com ⬇️

12.11.2025 17:05 πŸ‘ 21 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Sensory reformatting for a working visual memory A core function of visual working memory (WM) is to sustain mental representations of recent visual inputs, thereby bridging moments of experience. Th…

Sensory reformatting for a working visual memory www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

10.10.2025 03:18 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

New paper using M/EEG to look at attractive and repulsive serial dependence in working memory, led by the excellent Jiangang Shan, with Jasper Hajonides.

26.08.2025 16:37 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

β€œKijk maar of je het in je agenda kan proppen” (7/7)

10.08.2025 14:34 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

@fnkp.bsky.social using gen-AI to create awesome new experiment stimuli which nearly look alike visually, but depict completely different things. Fri, C135 (6/7)

10.08.2025 14:34 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

InΓ©s Pont-Sanchis combining EEG, eye-tracking, and computational models to examine working memory distractibility in Schizophrenia. Fri, C62 (5/7)

10.08.2025 14:34 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Frieda Born, who found long-term benefits of briefly *not* attending visual working memories, and takes it to fMRI to better understand why. Tue, A117 (4/7)

10.08.2025 14:34 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Fabio Bauer showing that contemporary vision models deal with visuospatial information about real world objects quite differently than humans do. Tue, A53 (3/7)

10.08.2025 14:34 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

@hanzule.bsky.social finding *no* evidence for rhythmic dynamics during multi-item working memory β€” at least not in sustained orientation-dependent gaze patterns, which are strong and clear for up to 3 items. Tue, A127 (2/7)

10.08.2025 14:34 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Pushing past my social-media fatigue to spotlight our lab’s new posters at #CCN2025 in Amsterdam. Come say hi to: (1/7)

10.08.2025 14:34 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Thanks so much @alzietlow.bsky.social‬ for the warm welcome, excited to be here!

10.07.2025 10:01 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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New preprint! πŸš¨β†’ Determinants of Visual Ambiguity Resolution. A new work with @ortiztudela.bsky.social @jvoeller.bsky.social @martinhebart.bsky.social and @gonzalezgarcia.bsky.social

We created ~2k images and collected ~100k responses to study visual ambiguity.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

29.05.2025 12:46 πŸ‘ 46 πŸ” 29 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 4
Vacancy ID 12064

We have a position open - if you’re interested in ambivalence in (social)decision making, check it out: www.verw.tu-dresden.de/StellAus/ste...

14.04.2025 20:19 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

Multiplexing of cognitive encoding by oculomotor networks leads to incidental gaze shifts
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
#neuroscience

09.04.2025 19:57 πŸ‘ 18 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

No April Fool's joke, one week left to apply!

Because some asked, we are an international team and English is the working language in the lab. German language skills are beneficial, but not essential.

01.04.2025 14:08 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Phase of firing does not reflect temporal order in sequence memory of humans and recurrent neural networks - Nature Neuroscience The temporal order of events in working memory is thought to be reflected by ordered neuronal firing at different phases. Here the authors show that this is not the case and that phase order is linked...

Science Alert 🚨: Our paper is now out in @natureneuro.bsky.social - We show that the firing phase of neurons in human MTL doesn’t reflect the order of events, challenging a long-standing theory of human memory.
nature.com/articles/s41593-025-01893-7

24.03.2025 12:55 πŸ‘ 53 πŸ” 24 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 5
PuG2025 | Psychologie und Gehirn Dear Colleagues, We are delighted to invite you to the 50th Annual Conference on β€œPsychology and the Brain (PuG2025),” held from June 18–21, 2025, at the Julius Maximilian University of WΓΌrzburg!

One week left to submit individual contributions for this year's 50th Psychology and Brain (PuG) conference in WΓΌrzburg. We look forward to receiving abstract submissions for accepted symposia as well as poster contributions www.pug2025.org

24.03.2025 12:24 πŸ‘ 13 πŸ” 13 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Two weeks left to apply!

24.03.2025 09:45 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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That city crow putting pizza on my thyme had me thinking for the rest of the day

22.03.2025 20:38 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Treemap chart showing the fragmented landscape of psychological measures.

Treemap chart showing the fragmented landscape of psychological measures.

Want to make nice graphs with me, starting this summer? I am hiring for two PhD positions at the University of Witten/Herdecke.

18.03.2025 15:31 πŸ‘ 95 πŸ” 73 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 5
Vacancy ID 12024

Join us at the new chair of Biopsychology at @tudresden.bsky.social! Fully funded university positions, broad topics in cognitive neuroscience, plus you get to work with the fabulous adaptive memory and cognition group (link below) 
www.verw.tu-dresden.de/StellAus/ste... (tinyurl.com/y6tjbptj)

18.03.2025 11:20 πŸ‘ 9 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 2
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We are looking for 2 new colleagues - #professorships in
(A) Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy
(B) Work & Organizational Psychology
Join a lively and collaborative department @tudresden.bsky.social in #Dresden
- Please share -
@dgps.bsky.social #jobalert πŸ“£
tu-dresden.de/tu-dresden/a...

24.02.2025 15:10 πŸ‘ 30 πŸ” 32 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 3

My favorite remote conference is coming back this year, and we are looking for a postdoc to join the team of organizers! If you LOVE working memory research and its wonderful community, join us!

22.02.2025 00:35 πŸ‘ 11 πŸ” 11 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

BAMB! is happening again in 2025. Learn how to model your behavioural data, next to the beach in Barcelona! keynotes this year from @athenaakrami.bsky.social and Peter Dayan.

11.02.2025 11:19 πŸ‘ 27 πŸ” 17 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Comprehensive exploration of visual working memory mechanisms using large-scale behavioral experiment - Nature Communications Two decades of research on visual working memory have yielded substantial yet fragmented knowledge. Here, using a large-scale experiment with 40 million responses, the author provides evidence these f...

Impressive work from Liqiang Huang:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'd like to see how this generalizes beyond 4-item color memory (e.g., different set sizes, retention intervals, memoranda, cueing, etc.). I'd also like to see comparison with earlier models. This model has "only" 57 parameters!

06.02.2025 11:31 πŸ‘ 24 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Germany protesting

Germany protesting

Nearly 250,000 people in Berlin showed up to protest fascism and the Musk backed AfD party.

02.02.2025 21:28 πŸ‘ 31307 πŸ” 7080 πŸ’¬ 470 πŸ“Œ 517