Associate Professor in Psychology at Columbia, PI of https://www.dpmlab.org/https://bsky.app/profile/chrisbaldassano.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/chrisbaldassano.bsky.social/post/3mbwpn7eai22wNice article from Columbia News on our new paper about neural representations of places and remembered items - including a video of the creative VR environment made by @xrmasiso.bsky.social ! https://news.columbia.edu/news/places-we-make-memories-help-us-inscribe-them08 Jan 2026 19:27 +0000at://did:plc:ysd3shq4tnxx5twbkkkfv2wf/app.bsky.feed.post/3mbwpn7eai22whttps://bsky.app/profile/chrisbaldassano.bsky.social/post/3mbp5cgs3xk2vOur new paper out in NHB! We started this back in @ptoncompmemlab.bsky.social's lab when I was a postdoc and Rolando was a grad student, showing that stable fMRI representations of places (learned in Rolando's custom-made VR world) provide the best anchors for later item learning [contains quote post or other embedded content]05 Jan 2026 19:10 +0000at://did:plc:ysd3shq4tnxx5twbkkkfv2wf/app.bsky.feed.post/3mbp5cgs3xk2vhttps://bsky.app/profile/chrisbaldassano.bsky.social/post/3m3uygrxn7k2cColumbia Psych is hiring *two* junior faculty in Cognitive Science/Neuroscience this year! If you work on cognition (broadly defined), submit your application materials as soon as possible (review starts Nov 1). If you have questions you can reach out to me by email! apply.interfolio.com/175428 https://apply.interfolio.com/17542823 Oct 2025 18:28 +0000at://did:plc:ysd3shq4tnxx5twbkkkfv2wf/app.bsky.feed.post/3m3uygrxn7k2chttps://bsky.app/profile/chrisbaldassano.bsky.social/post/3lzh6yaezc22tYears ago my lab tried to brainstorm ways to separately manipulate low-level (texture/pattern) and high-level (scene/object) image properties, for studying visual representations in the brain. Thanks to imaginative work by PhD student Zall Hirschstein, we now have a stimulus set that does just that! [contains quote post or other embedded content]22 Sep 2025 19:57 +0000at://did:plc:ysd3shq4tnxx5twbkkkfv2wf/app.bsky.feed.post/3lzh6yaezc22thttps://bsky.app/profile/chrisbaldassano.bsky.social/post/3lyy3d3rnjs2yWhat happens when we learn a new shortcut between places we thought were unconnected? Hannah found that the hippocampus rapidly adjusts its representations of environments to join them into a connected map - excited to share this final paper from her PhD work with me and @mariamaly.bsky.social ! [contains quote post or other embedded content]16 Sep 2025 19:42 +0000at://did:plc:ysd3shq4tnxx5twbkkkfv2wf/app.bsky.feed.post/3lyy3d3rnjs2yhttps://bsky.app/profile/chrisbaldassano.bsky.social/post/3lxuzewgwcs2fDoes watching a movie over and over make events slower or faster in the brain? With Narjes Al-Zahli and @mariamaly.bsky.social we find that different regions actually change in different directions, e.g. visual regions show finer-scale event structure and STS shows coarser-scale structure! [contains quote post or other embedded content]02 Sep 2025 21:04 +0000at://did:plc:ysd3shq4tnxx5twbkkkfv2wf/app.bsky.feed.post/3lxuzewgwcs2fhttps://bsky.app/profile/chrisbaldassano.bsky.social/post/3lxax64zgoc2hOut now: a unique multi-lab collaboration led by @matthiasnau.bsky.social showing that recalling a movie reactivates both neural and gaze patterns for sequences of scenes! [contains quote post or other embedded content]25 Aug 2025 21:31 +0000at://did:plc:ysd3shq4tnxx5twbkkkfv2wf/app.bsky.feed.post/3lxax64zgoc2hhttps://bsky.app/profile/chrisbaldassano.bsky.social/post/3lwevtomi522lCheck out the first paper from Halle’s lab: using a false-memory paradigm to challenge classical ideas about how memories are stored and change with age [contains quote post or other embedded content]14 Aug 2025 17:53 +0000at://did:plc:ysd3shq4tnxx5twbkkkfv2wf/app.bsky.feed.post/3lwevtomi522lhttps://bsky.app/profile/chrisbaldassano.bsky.social/post/3lthn4wyxos2vHow does the soundtrack of a movie change your memory of the story? New work led by @jayneuro.bsky.social finds that repeated musical motifs can reactivate neural patterns from earlier scenes, and reactivation is related to better subsequent memory! [contains quote post or other embedded content]08 Jul 2025 15:39 +0000at://did:plc:ysd3shq4tnxx5twbkkkfv2wf/app.bsky.feed.post/3lthn4wyxos2vhttps://bsky.app/profile/chrisbaldassano.bsky.social/post/3lt3h3tbiak2nGroundbreaking work by @martamasilva.bsky.social using intracranial recordings to study event boundaries and event memory, revealing neural mechanisms that we haven't been able to measure with fMRI! [contains quote post or other embedded content]03 Jul 2025 19:20 +0000at://did:plc:ysd3shq4tnxx5twbkkkfv2wf/app.bsky.feed.post/3lt3h3tbiak2nhttps://bsky.app/profile/chrisbaldassano.bsky.social/post/3lqrz3yovhk2pMy lab's research was featured on the public radio program The Academic Minute, who helped me put together a short summary of our recent work on shifting event boundaries in the brain! https://academicminute.org/christopher-baldassano-columbia-university-the-brain-organizes-narratives-into-meaningful-event-memories/04 Jun 2025 14:25 +0000at://did:plc:ysd3shq4tnxx5twbkkkfv2wf/app.bsky.feed.post/3lqrz3yovhk2phttps://bsky.app/profile/chrisbaldassano.bsky.social/post/3lmhndgsvxk23New preprint 🎉: How do episodic memory, emotions, and schemas for caregiver experiences come together in kids’ brains and verbal recall? Check out our new results showing how past and present childhood experiences shape perception and memory for movies: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.13.612953v210 Apr 2025 13:47 +0000at://did:plc:ysd3shq4tnxx5twbkkkfv2wf/app.bsky.feed.post/3lmhndgsvxk23https://bsky.app/profile/chrisbaldassano.bsky.social/post/3llojgqkwjs2mFor anyone at #CNS2025 - check out @xrmasiso.bsky.social's talk tomorrow afternoon, showing that we can use fMRI to predict which (VR) locations will be good anchors for creating *future* memories! www.cogneurosociety.org/talk/?id=5579 https://www.cogneurosociety.org/talk/?id=557931 Mar 2025 14:00 +0000at://did:plc:ysd3shq4tnxx5twbkkkfv2wf/app.bsky.feed.post/3llojgqkwjs2mhttps://bsky.app/profile/chrisbaldassano.bsky.social/post/3lireg6lfus2cThank you to Ingrid Wickelgren and the team at Quanta for putting together this great piece, describing work by my lab and others on the neural representations of events [contains quote post or other embedded content]22 Feb 2025 12:53 +0000at://did:plc:ysd3shq4tnxx5twbkkkfv2wf/app.bsky.feed.post/3lireg6lfus2chttps://bsky.app/profile/chrisbaldassano.bsky.social/post/3lgqh37bsuk2wAfter years of work designing and running this study with a multi-University team, we have our first preprint 🎉🎉 showing how a memorization technique builds neural representations through conjunctive representations! See thread and preprint link ⬇️ [contains quote post or other embedded content]27 Jan 2025 17:18 +0000at://did:plc:ysd3shq4tnxx5twbkkkfv2wf/app.bsky.feed.post/3lgqh37bsuk2w