THURSDAY, JANUARY 7, 2027
REGISTRATION
Time: 3:00–4:00 p.m.
Location: Outside Prospector 1-2
DAVE OLTON DATA BLITZ
Time: 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: Prospector 1-2
Chair: Victoria Templer, PhD
Description: If you would like to present at this session, please e-mail Victoria Templer at vtempler@providence.edu with the title of your presentation. Presentations are limited to 5 minutes including discussion. Presentations are strictly limited to 1 slide with a single panel.
PIZZA PARTY
Time: 6:30–8:00 p.m.
Location: Prospector 4
Cost: Included for registrants and guests, no extra cost
SESSION 1: Arc Across Scales: From Real-Time Imaging to Synaptic Plasticity, Memory, and Sleep
Time: 8:00–10:00 p.m.
Location: Prospector 1-2
Organizer: Jason Shepherd, University of Utah
Description: Pending
Speakers:
Oswald Steward, PhD
University of California, Irvine
“Progress toward developing a platform to track timing of Arc protein synthesis in living animals in real time using bioluminescent reporters. From barfing shrimp to lighted brains”
Sulagna Das, PhD
Emory University
“Imaging the Arc of Memory: From Gene Expression Dynamics to Synaptic Plasticity”
Jason Shepherd, PhD
University of Utah
Jason.Shepherd@neuro.utah.edu
“Arc mediates intercellular synaptic plasticity”
Sophie Caron, PhD
University of Utah
u6001169@utah.edu
“Arc regulates learning and sleep in Drosophila”
FRIDAY, JANUARY 8, 2027
SESSION 2: The hippocampal CA2 region: unique properties to role in social behavior
Time: 8:00–10:00 a.m.
Location: Prospector 1-2
Organizer: Steven Siegelbaum, Columbia University
Description: Following its initial description by Lorente de Nó in 1934, the CA2 region of the hippocampus remained relatively unstudied over the next 75 years. However, with the advent of molecular biological methods, it became clear that CA2 neurons had a number of distinct properties from their CA1 and CA3 neighbors. This includes an enrichment of receptors for the social neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin and a reduced ability to generate long-term potentiation. Studies using CA2-targeted genetically engineered mice revealed that CA2 plays a particularly important role in social memory behaviors. Studies in humans and mouse models have also found that abnormal CA2 function contributes to a number of neuropsychiatric disorders. In this session we will hear from three researchers whose recent work has provided important new insights into the unique cellular properties of CA2 neurons, how these neurons participate in the extinction of the memory of an aversive social experience, and how CA2 encodes social stimuli in both normal animals and in a rodent model related to autism spectrum disorder.
Speakers:
Steven Siegelbaum, PhD
Columbia University
sas8@cumc.columbia.edu
Introductory remarks (session chair)
Shannon Farris, PhD
Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion
farrissl@vtc.vt.edu
“Mitochondrial diversity shapes CA2 circuit-specific plasticity”
Pegah Kassraian, PhD
Columbia University; University of Bern
“A hippocampal circuit for the extinction of social fear”
Laura Colgin, PhD
University of Texas at Austin
colgin@mail.clm.utexas.edu
“Understanding how CA2 neurons code social experiences”
MENTORING LUNCH
Time: 12:00–2:00 p.m.
Description: Sign up to have lunch with a senior investigator to discuss science, career, mentoring and anything else. Open to students, fellows, and early career faculty. Sign up for your session at the registration desk.
SESSION 3: The Hippocampus as an Allostatic Map
Time: 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: Prospector 1-2
Organizer: Michael Bienkowski, University of Southern California
Description: Among its various roles in learning and memory, the hippocampus has been conceptualized as a multi-dimensional map. Prior frameworks propose that hippocampal circuits map space/time (O’Keefe & Nadel, 1978; Buzsaki & Tingley), brain-body relations (e.g., Buzsaki & Tingley), action planning (e.g., Zutshi et al., 2025), prediction of reward (e.g., Yaghoubi et al., 2026), social relations (e.g., Eichenbaum, 2015; Schafer & Schiller, 2018; Tavares et al., 2015), goals (e.g., Kumaran, Hassbis, & McClelland), and relational schemas (e.g., Bunsey and Eichenbaum, 1996; Cohen; Kuraran & McGuire, 2005). We propose that the hippocampus does not strictly map features of the external world, but instead constructs highly compressed, low-dimensional abstractions that predict energy expenditure and intake, thus forming an allostatic map. By referencing past experiences with similar energetic profiles, the hippocampal allostatic map allows animals to proactively anticipate and coordinate behavior toward changing allostatic states. The talks in this session will discuss key points of evidence that support the perspective of the hippocampus as an allostatic map.
Speakers:
Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD
Northeastern University
l.barrett@northeastern.edu
“The Allostatic Mapping Hypothesis”
Michael Bienkowski, PhD
University of Southern California
bienkows@usc.edu
“Hippocampal Circuits as an Anatomical Substrate for Convergent Multiscale Mapping of Internal and External States”
Ben Hutchinson, PhD
University of Oregon
bhutch@oregon.edu
“Towards a model of the allostatic map in the brain”
Scott Kanoski, PhD
University of Southern California
kanoski@usc.edu
“Meal-associated Memories Across the Hippocampus”
DINNER (ON YOUR OWN)
Time: 6:00–8:00 p.m.
SESSION 4: Making sense of memory making during naturalistic behavior
Time: 8:00–10:00 p.m.
Location: Prospector 1-2
Organizer: Cory Inman, PhD. Assistant Professor, University of Utah
Description: The proposed session will revolve around a central question: How can theories of learning and memory be informed by studies that extend behavioral and neural recording data into more real-world settings? Although laboratory studies have been invaluable and necessary to isolate specific effects, laboratory and real-world studies can differ significantly in their functional characteristics, richness, and complexity. Thus, bridging laboratory and real-world studies will ultimately be necessary to fully explain learning and memory behaviors. To translate our theories into treatments, such as direct brain stimulation for memory enhancement, the utility and promise of insights from laboratory studies will depend on how well we can assess learning and memory during rich, complex, continuous real-world behaviors. This symposium idea is an update to a prior symposium session held five years ago. Since then, substantial methodological and theoretical progress has been made in studying the neural basis of memory using ecologically valid approaches. Ecological approaches to studying memory are not new and date back to seminal work by Ulric Neisser, Gene Winograd, and others, but they have been less commonly used to inform theories of learning and memory in recent years. Fortunately, advances in mobile and wearable recording technology now make it possible to study learning and memory during experiences that closely approximate everyday life. However, using these tools in public spaces raises new ethical questions, as these systems capture non-consenting bystanders and generate highly identifying personal data. The speakers in this session are at the forefront of both developing these approaches and grappling with these challenges.
First, Cory Inman will set the foundation for the session by briefly discussing the need for studies of learning and memory ‘in the wild’, followed by an introduction of each of the speakers. Next, Kari Hoffman will share her work showing that by recording in the hippocampus of freely behaving monkeys, they found a new, rich description of hippocampal activity that may constitute an important link between exploration and memory. Then, Cory Inman will present his findings showing reliable changes in hippocampal activity around moments when human participants become lost and find their way during real-world navigation. He will also discuss the development of a novel, easily deployable system for capturing autobiographical memory encoding from a first-person perspective and synchronizing that real-world experience with neural recordings. Next, Teneille Brown will share neuroethics data on the privacy and legal concerns of patients undergoing neural recordings in public spaces and bystanders observing these patients during memory encoding.
Finally, Jesse Rissman will present a novel naturalistic paradigm for studying episodic memory in which participants complete a self-guided tour of an art museum while scalp EEG activity, eye movements, and physiological responses are recorded continuously during both the museum experience and subsequent memory retrieval. The study combines narrative recall, old/new recognition, and varied assessments of contextual recollection to investigate the neural and behavioral mechanisms supporting memory for complex real-world experiences. Overall, this session aims to inspire discussion among all attendees about how ecologically focused studies of real-world behavior and neural processing might help refine our theories of learning and memory, and how such research can be conducted responsibly.
Speakers:
Kari Hoffman, PhD
Vanderbilt University
Kari.Hoffman@vanderbilt.edu
“Exploiting exploration in the macaque to understand learning in context”
Cory Inman, PhD
University of Utah
Cory.inman@psych.utah.edu
“Hippocampal neural dynamics shift when people get lost and find their way”
Teneille Brown, JD
S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah
Teneillie.Brown@law.utah.edu
“Legal and ethical considerations for studies of memory in the real world”
Jesse Rissman, PhD
University of California, Los Angeles
rissman@psych.ucla.edu
“Remembering art in context: A multimodal investigation of episodic memory during a self-guided museum experience”
SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 2027
MENTORING LUNCH
Time: 12:00–2:00 p.m.
SESSION 5: Active sensory information sampling and spatial cognition
Time: 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: Prospector 1-2
Organizers: Ehren Newman, PhD. Indiana University
Francesco Savelli, PhD. University of Texas at San Antonio
Description: Central to the study of spatial cognition is the question of how and when internal models of the environment are updated. There has been exciting progress in answering this question in recent years. Both memory accuracy and plasticity in the hippocampal code have been directly linked to the spontaneous expression of active information sampling behaviors during task performance in both animal and human models. These results provide exciting new insights into the interplay between exploratory/investigatory behavior, brain function and cognitive performance. They also provide fertile new directions for understanding the neurobiology of memory.
This symposium features researchers at the forefront of this emerging area of research working with humans and rats, examining behavioral structure and neurophysiological dynamics, and the relevance of all the above for memory and spatial cognition.
Speakers:
Pelin Ozel
Johns Hopkins University
pozel1@jhu.edu
“Reward-associated exploration enhances rapid, one-trial hippocampal place field potentiation and subsequent backward shifting”
Tammy T. Tran, PhD
Georgia Institute of Technology
tammy.tran@gatech.edu
“Eye-tracking differences in exploration during immersive virtual reality”
Payton J. Davis
University of Texas at San Antonio
“Prevalence and modulation of rat off-track head scanning on linear tracks: possible implications for representational and dynamic properties of hippocampal place cells”
Ehren Newman, PhD
Indiana University
ehnewman@iu.edu
“Rearing and head scanning as functionally interchangeable information-seeking behaviors”
BUSINESS MEETING
Time: 6:00–6:30 p.m.
Location: Prospector 1-2
BANQUET
Time: 7:00–11:00 p.m.
Location: Prospector 4
Cost: For registrants and guests
SUNDAY, JANUARY 10, 2027
SESSION 6: Balancing stability and remapping: how hippocampal circuits adapt to changing task demands
Time: 8:00–10:00 a.m.
Location: Prospector 1-2
Organizers: Jack Bowler & Amy Monasterio, University of Utah
Description: There is an inherent tension in the representational demands of the hippocampus (HPC): the region is expected to stably reflect prior episodes, yet update its representations with experience according to context and task demands. This session will focus on an emerging body of work on navigation and learning in rodent models using largescale population recordings that highlight this tension between flexible encoding of behaviorally relevant environmental features and maintaining stable representations of space and context. Task constraints shape single-neuron tuning into behaviorally relevant mappings, with parallel population codes for space and reward-relative position. Experience and external inputs flexibly shape hippocampal spatial representations, providing an intuitive “outside-in” account of spatial coding. However, individual cell-tuning is also constrained by local network architecture and neuromodulatory signaling, providing a complementary “inside-out” view of hippocampal coding. Local recurrence patterns influence the trade-off between flexibility and stability within HPC subregions, promoting parallel pathways for both stable and flexible representations. On longer timescales, longitudinal studies show that, despite representational drift at the level of individual neurons, information about context is preserved in CA1 over weeks, indicating that stable contextual representations can coexist with ongoing single-cell remapping. This session aims to clarify how the HPC uses information acquired through prior learning to guide adaptive behavior while retaining the capacity to update its representations with new experience, and how hippocampal spatial codes balance plasticity and stability.
Speakers:
Marielena Sosa, PhD
University of Colorado Boulder
Marielena.Sosa@colorado.edu
“Parallel and flexible hippocampal maps for space and experience relative to reward”
Sam McKenzie, PhD
University of New Mexico
SAMcKenzie@salud.unm.edu
“Contribution of feedback inhibition on the geometry of hippocampal memory spaces”
Eunji Kong, PhD
Columbia University
ek3324@columbia.edu
“Recurrent connectivity shapes spatial coding in hippocampal CA3 subregions”
Alexandra T. Keinath, PhD
University of Illinois Chicago
atk@uic.edu
“Individual differences in mouse CA1 representational structure reflect the predictive structure of navigation”
SESSION 7: Mechanisms of structure learning and memory-guided behavior
Time: 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: Prospector 1-2
Organizer: Nicole L. Varga, University of Texas at Austin
Description: The ability to remember individual experiences while extracting structured knowledge that generalizes across them is fundamental to learning and memory. Yet we lack an overarching understanding of the mechanisms that govern when related experiences are linked together and when they are instead represented in ways that preserve their distinctiveness. Recent data suggests that structure learning depends not only on the relationships encountered, but also on the learner’s capacity to form precise memories for individual episodes, to reactivate prior experiences during related learning episodes, and to use retrieved information to guide organization of memory in ways that support flexible inference and decision-making in the future. This symposium will examine how variability in memory and neural function—across individuals, development, and species—interact with learning contexts to shape how learners extract and represent structure from experience. Talk 1 examines how developmental changes in neural memory reactivation shape the organization of related memories, revealing how developmental differences in neural representation account for differences in inference behavior. Talk 2 investigates how individual differences in memory precision and the structure of learning experiences jointly influence the acquisition of complex, interconnected relational networks, combining computational models in humans with hippocampal replay recordings in rodents to examine mechanisms operating during encoding and subsequent reactivation. Talk 3 explores how episodic memory retrieval shapes decision-making across development, demonstrating how differences in the content of retrieved memories influence choices. The symposium will bring these complementary perspectives into dialogue to ask whether common computational principles explain how learners extract structure from experience, how that structure is shaped by developmental and individual differences, and how learned representations are subsequently recruited to guide behavior. By integrating evidence across species, populations, and levels of analysis, we aim to move toward a unified account of how the interaction between memory capacity, learning environments, and retrieval processes determines what is learned, how knowledge is organized, and when it can be flexibly extended.
Speakers:
Nicole L. Varga, PhD
University of Texas at Austin
nvarga@austin.utexas.edu
“Developmental neuroimaging of memory and inference”
Keiland W. Cooper, PhD
University of California, Irvine
kwcooper@uci.edu
“Individual differences in structure learning: computational modeling in adults and hippocampal replay in rodents”
Nora Harhen, PhD
New York University
nora.harhen@nyu.edu
Title: TBD
Tristan Yates, PhD
Carnegie Mellon University
tsy2105@columbia.edu
“Brain basis of statistical learning and memory in infants and children”