apply! its a fantastic, collaborative and energetic department investigating physiology and neuroscience across scales - based in beautiful UCL in London

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We are excited about this is bc. patients with mental illness such as schizophrenia or depression are often impaired in problems that require this type of decision making, and have alterations in their hippocampus. We link these - we show that you need the hippocampus for solving these problems! 6/7

She also found that the way the hippocampus supports hidden state inference is similar to how it supports spatial navigation and memory – which means we can use decades of beautiful work studying spatial navigation (inc. Nobel prize work from UCL!) to help us better understand this process 5/7

@karyna-mi.bsky.social found that the hippocampus is key for this process - mice without a functioning hippocampus couldn’t use hidden state inference anymore! 4/7

However, we often notice things: how quickly they respond, short messages, if they’re using emojis. We use these clues to make an educated guess about how our friend is feeling. e.g. if they reply with quick, one-word answers we will infer they’re feeling sad – this is hidden state inference! 3/7

But what is hidden state inference? Imagine you’re texting with a friend. Because you can’t see them in person, you can’t directly tell if they’re happy, sad, or stressed. This is because their emotional state is hidden - you can’t observe happiness or sadness directly through text messages. 2/7