Adam Hockley
@adhockley.bsky.social
Research Scientist @ Nathan Kline Institute - Hamm Lab
Prev: Salamanca, Michigan, Nottingham
Auditory neuroscience, neural circuits, predictive coding, tinnitus
Prev: Salamanca, Michigan, Nottingham
Auditory neuroscience, neural circuits, predictive coding, tinnitus
Pinned
Adam Hockley
@adhockley.bsky.social
· Apr 22
Top-down prediction signals from the medial prefrontal cortex govern auditory cortex prediction errors
Hockley et al. investigate how the brain processes auditory stimuli based on predictability.
The results show that predictions in the medial prefrontal cortex govern sensory information
flow and modul...
www.cell.com
Thrilled to present our paper out today in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social
We asked how prediction errors are generated in the auditory cortex during the oddball paradigm. When blocking top-down prediction signals from mPFC, we saw reduced prediction errors in A1.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
We asked how prediction errors are generated in the auditory cortex during the oddball paradigm. When blocking top-down prediction signals from mPFC, we saw reduced prediction errors in A1.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
Reposted by Adam Hockley
Does predictive coding work in SPACE or in TIME? Most neuroscientists assume TIME, i.e. neurons predict their future sensory inputs. We show that in visual cortex predictive coding actually works across SPACE, just like the original Rao+Ballard theory #neuroscience
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
September 22, 2025 at 7:09 PM
Does predictive coding work in SPACE or in TIME? Most neuroscientists assume TIME, i.e. neurons predict their future sensory inputs. We show that in visual cortex predictive coding actually works across SPACE, just like the original Rao+Ballard theory #neuroscience
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
Reposted by Adam Hockley
Long time in the making: our preprint of survey study on the diversity with how people seem to experience #mentalimagery. Suggests #aphantasia should be redefined as absence of depictive thought, not merely "not seeing". Some more take home msg:
#psychskysci #neuroscience
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
#psychskysci #neuroscience
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
October 2, 2025 at 6:10 PM
Long time in the making: our preprint of survey study on the diversity with how people seem to experience #mentalimagery. Suggests #aphantasia should be redefined as absence of depictive thought, not merely "not seeing". Some more take home msg:
#psychskysci #neuroscience
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
#psychskysci #neuroscience
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
"Silent neurons individually carry little information... however, we observed that combining the silence of one neuron with temporal firing patterns or firing rate of the other neuron in a pair led to comparable synergy to combining the spiking activity of both neurons"
doi.org/10.1002/advs...
doi.org/10.1002/advs...
Neural Response Reliability as a Marker of the Transition of Neural Codes along Auditory Pathways
Decoding sound from neural activity in mice reveals a striking shift in how the brain encodes sound: from precise but redundant timing codes in early auditory areas to efficient, synergistic rate-bas....
doi.org
October 9, 2025 at 11:57 PM
"Silent neurons individually carry little information... however, we observed that combining the silence of one neuron with temporal firing patterns or firing rate of the other neuron in a pair led to comparable synergy to combining the spiking activity of both neurons"
doi.org/10.1002/advs...
doi.org/10.1002/advs...
Reposted by Adam Hockley
Early unilateral auditory deprivation can cause lasting spatial #hearing deficits. @anbuhlk.bsky.social &co show that unilateral #HearingLoss during development (but not adult-onset) impairs binaural #brainstem function & spatial hearing acuity in guinea pigs @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/46njw1P
September 8, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Early unilateral auditory deprivation can cause lasting spatial #hearing deficits. @anbuhlk.bsky.social &co show that unilateral #HearingLoss during development (but not adult-onset) impairs binaural #brainstem function & spatial hearing acuity in guinea pigs @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/46njw1P
Reposted by Adam Hockley
Sad day for peope who still believe brain areas are the primary organizational units of function in the brain.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour - Nature
The International Brain Laboratory presents a brain-wide electrophysiological map obtained from pooling data from 12 laboratories that performed the same standardized perceptual decision-making task i...
www.nature.com
September 4, 2025 at 11:17 AM
Sad day for peope who still believe brain areas are the primary organizational units of function in the brain.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Adam Hockley
music lessons don't make kids smarter, but many people have assumed that music lessons would have near-transfer effects, e.g. improving aspects of auditory perception
big new study led by Andrew Oxenham says "nope".
music lessons make kids better at music & that's good enough reason to do 'em !
big new study led by Andrew Oxenham says "nope".
music lessons make kids better at music & that's good enough reason to do 'em !
Large-scale multi-site study shows no association between musical training and early auditory neural sound encoding - Nature Communications
Widely cited studies have claimed that musical training is associated with enhanced neural encoding for sound at early stages of the auditory system. Results from this large-scale multisite study do n...
www.nature.com
August 9, 2025 at 1:01 AM
music lessons don't make kids smarter, but many people have assumed that music lessons would have near-transfer effects, e.g. improving aspects of auditory perception
big new study led by Andrew Oxenham says "nope".
music lessons make kids better at music & that's good enough reason to do 'em !
big new study led by Andrew Oxenham says "nope".
music lessons make kids better at music & that's good enough reason to do 'em !
Reposted by Adam Hockley
First lab outing since the move to NYC.... feeling so lucky to have such a talented and fun group! with Lital Rachmany, @adhockley.bsky.social, me, Molly Hornick, Fumiyasu Imai, and @cgalli-io.bsky.social
August 5, 2025 at 5:08 PM
First lab outing since the move to NYC.... feeling so lucky to have such a talented and fun group! with Lital Rachmany, @adhockley.bsky.social, me, Molly Hornick, Fumiyasu Imai, and @cgalli-io.bsky.social
Reposted by Adam Hockley
Are predictions computed hierarchically, or can they be computed locally? Check out our paper! Congrats, Toshitake Asabuki and @colleenjg.bsky.social !
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
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...
www.pnas.org
July 2, 2025 at 8:31 AM
Are predictions computed hierarchically, or can they be computed locally? Check out our paper! Congrats, Toshitake Asabuki and @colleenjg.bsky.social !
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Reposted by Adam Hockley
#ICYMI Areas of the brain that help a person differentiate between what is real and what is imaginary have been uncovered in a new study led by @uclpals.bsky.social and @uclqsion.bsky.social researchers.
Brain mechanisms that distinguish imagination from reality discovered
Areas of the brain that help a person differentiate between what is real and what is imaginary have been uncovered in a new study led by UCL researchers.
buff.ly
June 29, 2025 at 10:08 AM
#ICYMI Areas of the brain that help a person differentiate between what is real and what is imaginary have been uncovered in a new study led by @uclpals.bsky.social and @uclqsion.bsky.social researchers.
Reposted by Adam Hockley
📣New study in Neuron, featuring modeling insights: "Cell-Specific Dendritic Integration in Cortical GABAergic Interneurons"! It reveals PV & SST interneurons compute differently. This highlights how distinct dendrites enable specialized brain computations!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Distinct dendritic integration strategies control dynamics of inhibition in the neocortex
Dendrites critically influence single-neuron computations, but their role in neocortical GABAergic interneurons (INs) remains poorly understood. We fo…
www.sciencedirect.com
July 3, 2025 at 10:12 AM
📣New study in Neuron, featuring modeling insights: "Cell-Specific Dendritic Integration in Cortical GABAergic Interneurons"! It reveals PV & SST interneurons compute differently. This highlights how distinct dendrites enable specialized brain computations!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Here's our new #preprint on triggering of cortical Up states by deviants in the auditory oddball paradigm.
Up states are reliably evoked by deviants under anesthesia, explaining the long-latency deviant responses seen in previous studies.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Up states are reliably evoked by deviants under anesthesia, explaining the long-latency deviant responses seen in previous studies.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Auditory deviants evoke cortical state changes under anesthesia
Context-dependent sensory processing within the predictive coding framework relies on detecting mismatches between incoming stimuli and internal predictive models. Sensory deviants elicit prediction e...
www.biorxiv.org
July 3, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Here's our new #preprint on triggering of cortical Up states by deviants in the auditory oddball paradigm.
Up states are reliably evoked by deviants under anesthesia, explaining the long-latency deviant responses seen in previous studies.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Up states are reliably evoked by deviants under anesthesia, explaining the long-latency deviant responses seen in previous studies.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Adam Hockley
🚀 We are excited to share that bombcell is now available in Python! 🐍 Automatically sort your units into good/MUA/noise/non-somatic using quality metrics and interpretable & adjustable classification thresholds.
pip install and play around with our toy dataset:
🔗 github.com/Julie-Fabre/...
pip install and play around with our toy dataset:
🔗 github.com/Julie-Fabre/...
GitHub - Julie-Fabre/bombcell: Automated quality control, curation and neuron classification of spike-sorted electrophysiology data
Automated quality control, curation and neuron classification of spike-sorted electrophysiology data - Julie-Fabre/bombcell
github.com
June 13, 2025 at 6:55 PM
🚀 We are excited to share that bombcell is now available in Python! 🐍 Automatically sort your units into good/MUA/noise/non-somatic using quality metrics and interpretable & adjustable classification thresholds.
pip install and play around with our toy dataset:
🔗 github.com/Julie-Fabre/...
pip install and play around with our toy dataset:
🔗 github.com/Julie-Fabre/...
A great catch up today in the Jono's @ Nottingham 🏰
June 12, 2025 at 11:58 PM
A great catch up today in the Jono's @ Nottingham 🏰
My final day at the @incyl.bsky.social today! I've met so many amazing people here and I'll miss everyone so much 🩵 next step is back to UK for a month of hiking, cycling and camping, then heading to @jordanhamm.bsky.social lab soon! 🗽
June 3, 2025 at 3:12 PM
My final day at the @incyl.bsky.social today! I've met so many amazing people here and I'll miss everyone so much 🩵 next step is back to UK for a month of hiking, cycling and camping, then heading to @jordanhamm.bsky.social lab soon! 🗽
Reposted by Adam Hockley
Excited to share my PhD paper! In it, we use targeted 2-photon optogenetic stimulation to determine how V1 activity is read-out in a detection task. We found that network influence, not visual coding properties, predicted the impact of ensembles on behavior - contradicting our expectations (1/5).
May 15, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Excited to share my PhD paper! In it, we use targeted 2-photon optogenetic stimulation to determine how V1 activity is read-out in a detection task. We found that network influence, not visual coding properties, predicted the impact of ensembles on behavior - contradicting our expectations (1/5).
Reposted by Adam Hockley
1/
Excited to share our new paper just out in Scientific Reports!
🧠🎧 Using intracranial EEG, we show how the human brain automatically encodes patterns in random sounds– without attention or explicit awareness.
🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Excited to share our new paper just out in Scientific Reports!
🧠🎧 Using intracranial EEG, we show how the human brain automatically encodes patterns in random sounds– without attention or explicit awareness.
🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Direct brain recordings reveal implicit encoding of structure in random auditory streams - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Direct brain recordings reveal implicit encoding of structure in random auditory streams
doi.org
May 5, 2025 at 10:36 AM
1/
Excited to share our new paper just out in Scientific Reports!
🧠🎧 Using intracranial EEG, we show how the human brain automatically encodes patterns in random sounds– without attention or explicit awareness.
🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Excited to share our new paper just out in Scientific Reports!
🧠🎧 Using intracranial EEG, we show how the human brain automatically encodes patterns in random sounds– without attention or explicit awareness.
🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Reposted by Adam Hockley
How does our brain predict the future? Our review of predictive processing + research program is now on arXiv arxiv.org/abs/2504.09614
50+ neuroscientists distributed across the world worked together to create this unique community project.
50+ neuroscientists distributed across the world worked together to create this unique community project.
April 15, 2025 at 6:58 AM
How does our brain predict the future? Our review of predictive processing + research program is now on arXiv arxiv.org/abs/2504.09614
50+ neuroscientists distributed across the world worked together to create this unique community project.
50+ neuroscientists distributed across the world worked together to create this unique community project.
Reposted by Adam Hockley
Does your research involve comparing experimental conditions? Then our latest publication is for you: We developed generalized contrastive PCA (gcPCA), a tool for comparing high-dimensional datasets. 🧠📊 doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012747
This tool was born out of necessity, here is the story. 🧵
1/
This tool was born out of necessity, here is the story. 🧵
1/
April 18, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Does your research involve comparing experimental conditions? Then our latest publication is for you: We developed generalized contrastive PCA (gcPCA), a tool for comparing high-dimensional datasets. 🧠📊 doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012747
This tool was born out of necessity, here is the story. 🧵
1/
This tool was born out of necessity, here is the story. 🧵
1/
Reposted by Adam Hockley
New preprint with systematic measurements of feature tuning in the mouse auditory system made with robust representation similarity analysis. Validates a range of earlier observations and generalizes beyond that.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Feature-dependent decorrelation of sound representations across the auditory pathway
Early studies on orientation selectivity in the visual cortex have suggested that sensory systems generate new feature representations at specific processing stages. Many observations challenge this v...
www.biorxiv.org
April 21, 2025 at 12:50 PM
New preprint with systematic measurements of feature tuning in the mouse auditory system made with robust representation similarity analysis. Validates a range of earlier observations and generalizes beyond that.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Thrilled to present our paper out today in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social
We asked how prediction errors are generated in the auditory cortex during the oddball paradigm. When blocking top-down prediction signals from mPFC, we saw reduced prediction errors in A1.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
We asked how prediction errors are generated in the auditory cortex during the oddball paradigm. When blocking top-down prediction signals from mPFC, we saw reduced prediction errors in A1.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
Top-down prediction signals from the medial prefrontal cortex govern auditory cortex prediction errors
Hockley et al. investigate how the brain processes auditory stimuli based on predictability.
The results show that predictions in the medial prefrontal cortex govern sensory information
flow and modul...
www.cell.com
April 22, 2025 at 3:06 PM
Thrilled to present our paper out today in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social
We asked how prediction errors are generated in the auditory cortex during the oddball paradigm. When blocking top-down prediction signals from mPFC, we saw reduced prediction errors in A1.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
We asked how prediction errors are generated in the auditory cortex during the oddball paradigm. When blocking top-down prediction signals from mPFC, we saw reduced prediction errors in A1.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
Reposted by Adam Hockley
Excited to share my latest work just out in @pnas.org! This NIH MOSAIC K99-funded project identifies a top-down cortical circuit—from cingulate to auditory cortex—that supports auditory perceptual performance in challenging listening conditions: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
The cingulate cortex facilitates auditory perception under challenging listening conditions | PNAS
We often exert greater cognitive resources (i.e., listening effort) to understand
speech under challenging acoustic conditions. This mechanism can ...
www.pnas.org
April 4, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Excited to share my latest work just out in @pnas.org! This NIH MOSAIC K99-funded project identifies a top-down cortical circuit—from cingulate to auditory cortex—that supports auditory perceptual performance in challenging listening conditions: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Some really nice work on autonomic prediction errors in cortical circuits
Ex vivo cortical circuits learn to predict and spontaneously replay temporal patterns - Nature Communications
Because the ability to tell time and make predictions anchor much of cognition, it has been proposed that they are computational primitives. Here, authors directly demonstrated that this is the case b...
www.nature.com
April 14, 2025 at 6:33 AM
Some really nice work on autonomic prediction errors in cortical circuits