Nick Turk-Browne, PhD
Professor of Psychology and in the Child Study Center and of Neurosurgery and of Psychiatry and Director of the Wu Tsai InstituteCards
About
Titles
Professor of Psychology and in the Child Study Center and of Neurosurgery and of Psychiatry and Director of the Wu Tsai Institute
Biography
Nick Turk-Browne is Director of the Wu Tsai Institute and Professor with primary appointment in the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and secondary appointments in the Departments of Neurosurgery and Psychiatry and the Child Study Center in the School of Medicine. He is also a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (since 2016). Nick obtained an HBSc from the University of Toronto in 2004 and a PhD from Yale University in 2009, then served on the faculty at Princeton University from 2009-2017. His research takes an integrative perspective, using behavioral studies, functional magnetic resonance imaging, intracranial recording/stimulation, and computational modeling to understand how cognitive and neural systems interact in the human brain. He has published extensively on how we perceive and attend to the world, and how we learn from experience and store information in memory. His lab has recently pioneered techniques for brain imaging in awake and behaving infants and toddlers. Nick's work has been published in leading journals and featured in major news outlets. His research has been funded by federal agencies, philanthropic foundations, and corporate partners. He received young investigator awards from the American Psychological Association (2015), Vision Sciences Society (2016), Cognitive Neuroscience Society (2017), and Society of Experimental Psychologists (2018), as well as the Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences (2025).
Appointments
Department of Psychology
ProfessorPrimaryChild Study Center
ProfessorSecondaryNeurosurgery
ProfessorSecondaryPsychiatry
ProfessorSecondary
Other Departments & Organizations
Education & Training
- PhD
- Yale University, Cognitive Psychology (2009)
- BSc (Hon)
- University of Toronto, Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence (2004)
Research
Publications
2025
The ubiquity of episodic-like memory during infancy
Behm L, Turk-Browne N, Kibbe M. The ubiquity of episodic-like memory during infancy. Trends In Cognitive Sciences 2025 PMID: 40404529, DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2025.04.003.Peer-Reviewed Original ResearchLatent Representation Learning for Multimodal Brain Activity Translation
Afrasiyabi A, Bhaskar D, Busch E, Caplette L, Singh R, Lajoie G, Turk-Browne N, Krishnaswamy S. Latent Representation Learning for Multimodal Brain Activity Translation. 2025, 00: 1-5. DOI: 10.1109/icassp49660.2025.10887834.Peer-Reviewed Original ResearchBrain activityElectrophysiological recordingsFunctional brain unitsBrain information processingFunctional connectivityNeuroimaging techniquesBrain functionNeuroscience researchAttention networkModality-specific biasesInformation processingModel functional connectivityBrain unitsBrainSpectral filteringNeuroscienceClinical contextIncreased spatial precisionBrain signalsFMRILatent representation learningGraph attention networkHeterogeneous data sourcesResolution gapSpatial precisionHippocampal encoding of memories in human infants
Yates T, Fel J, Choi D, Trach J, Behm L, Ellis C, Turk-Browne N. Hippocampal encoding of memories in human infants. Science 2025, 387: 1316-1320. PMID: 40112047, DOI: 10.1126/science.adt7570.Peer-Reviewed Original ResearchConceptsInfantile amnesiaFunctional magnetic resonance imagingEncoding of memoriesMemory taskEpisodic memoryHippocampal encodingHuman infantsAwake infantsMemoryEncoding mechanismMagnetic resonance imagingAmnesiaMemory-basedIndividual memoryAutobiographical recordResonance imagingPostencodingHippocampusPeriod of human lifeYears of ageInfancyBrainTaskRetrievalMovies reveal the fine-grained organization of infant visual cortex
Ellis C, Yates T, Arcaro M, Turk-Browne N. Movies reveal the fine-grained organization of infant visual cortex. ELife 2025, 12: rp92119. PMID: 40047799, PMCID: PMC11884787, DOI: 10.7554/elife.92119.Peer-Reviewed Original ResearchMovies reveal the fine-grained organization of infant visual cortex
Ellis C, Yates T, Arcaro M, Turk-Browne N. Movies reveal the fine-grained organization of infant visual cortex. ELife 2025, 12 DOI: 10.7554/elife.92119.4.Peer-Reviewed Original ResearchBrain activityInfant visual systemMagnetic resonance imagingFunctional magnetic resonance imagingInfants' visual processingAdults' brain activityVentral visual cortexInfant brain activityShort attention spanAdult brainVisual cortexInfants' perceptionCognitive tasksBrain organizationBrain structuresInfant scansInfant mindFMRI dataInfant brain structureSensory processingNeurodevelopmental conditionsVisual processingAttention spanHomotopic areasInfant brain
2024
Sculpting new visual categories into the human brain
Iordan C, Ritvo V, Norman K, Turk-Browne N, Cohen J. Sculpting new visual categories into the human brain. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America 2024, 121: e2410445121. PMID: 39625982, PMCID: PMC11648923, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2410445121.Peer-Reviewed Original ResearchConceptsHuman brainCategory of visual objectsReal-time functional MRIDomains of cognitionExplicit awarenessNeural biasFunctional MRINeural representationPerceptual distinctivenessVisual categoriesVisual objectsActivity patternsBrainMotor controlResearch paradigmVisual knowledgeParticipantsControl categoryCognitionNeurofeedbackMemoryLearningParadigmCategoriesDecision-makingInducing representational change in the hippocampus through real-time neurofeedback
Peng K, Wammes J, Nguyen A, Iordan C, Norman K, Turk-Browne N. Inducing representational change in the hippocampus through real-time neurofeedback. Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society B Biological Sciences 2024, 379: 20230091. PMID: 39428880, PMCID: PMC11491844, DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2023.0091.Peer-Reviewed Original ResearchConceptsFunctional magnetic resonance imagingReal-time functional magnetic resonance imagingPatterns of fMRI activityCategorical perception taskReal-time neurofeedbackNeurocognitive mechanismsFMRI sessionStimulus similarityFMRI activationTask demandsBehavioral consequencesUntrained objectsNeural representationPerception taskMemory integrationRepresentational changeEndogenous neuromodulatorNeurofeedbackHippocampusCortical representationIncreased coactivationMagnetic resonance imagingVisual cortexMemoryMultiple theoriesA neural network model of differentiation and integration of competing memories
Ritvo V, Nguyen A, Turk-Browne N, Norman K. A neural network model of differentiation and integration of competing memories. ELife 2024, 12: rp88608. PMID: 39319791, PMCID: PMC11424095, DOI: 10.7554/elife.88608.Peer-Reviewed Original ResearchConceptsNeural network modelUnsupervised neural network modelUnsupervised learning mechanismLearning mechanismLearning modelsNetwork modelComputational explanationInactive memoryNeural representationActive competitorsDiverse setRepresentationMemoryRepresentation of memoryMemory literatureBrain regionsNovel predictionsA neural network model of differentiation and integration of competing memories
Ritvo V, Nguyen A, Turk-Browne N, Norman K. A neural network model of differentiation and integration of competing memories. ELife 2024, 12 DOI: 10.7554/elife.88608.3.Peer-Reviewed Original ResearchNeural network modelUnsupervised neural network modelUnsupervised learning mechanismLearning mechanismLearning modelsNetwork modelComputational explanationInactive memoryNeural representationActive competitorsDiverse setRepresentationMemoryRepresentation of memoryMemory literatureBrain regionsNovel predictionsThe representational dynamics of visual expectations in the brain
Caplette L, Kurumisawa T, Borges H, Cortes-Briones J, Turk-Browne N. The representational dynamics of visual expectations in the brain. Journal Of Vision 2024, 24: 1362. DOI: 10.1167/jov.24.10.1362.Peer-Reviewed Original Research
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