MEMO team - Brain, Memory and Language Lab

29/05/2026

New article from Andrea Kóbor and Eszter Tóth-Fáber

Tóth-Fáber, E., and A.Kóbor. 2026. “Alpha and Theta Oscillations Differentiate Escalating Risk Levels During Reward Anticipation in Sequential Decision Making.” Psychophysiology63, no. 6: e70333.

https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.70333.

Congrats!!!

24/04/2026

We warmly invite you to attend Bianka Brezóczki ’s doctoral pre-defense.
https://www.ppk.elte.hu/brezoczki-bianka-muhelyvita

Bianka Brezóczki

Az ELTE PPK Pszichológiai Doktori Iskola tisztelettel meghívja Önt Brezóczki Bianka „Neurocognitive mechanisms across the spectrum of obsessive-compulsive tendencies: th

09/04/2026

If childhood adversity is harmful, are its cognitive consequences always and only negative?
Do we need to question deficit models?

In our new paper, we studied implicit statistical learning: the ability to unconsciously detect patterns in the world around us. This is one of the basic learning mechanisms that helps people adapt to regularities in their environment. It is also relevant for real-life skills, including motor learning, sports, music, and language.

What we found was not what a simple deficit model would predict.

People with greater childhood adversity did not show worse learning overall. They reached a similar final level, but they learned faster.

So this is not about saying adversity is “good.” It is not.

But it does suggest that adversity may shape cognition in more complex ways than we often assume. Sometimes the difference may lie not in whether people learn, but in how quickly they become sensitive to the structure of their environment.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article/13/4/252007/481272/

BBence FarkasTTeodóra VékonyBBianka Brezóczki

Abstract. According to deficit models, early life adversity disrupts normal development, leading to long-term emotional, behavioural and cognitive difficul

07/04/2026

Our new paper is out in the Journal of Attention Disorders.

ADHD-Like Traits Reshape the Balance Between Inhibitory Control and Predictive Processes

We studied how ADHD-like traits relate to response inhibition and statistical learning in a non-clinical sample of university students. We found that higher ADHD-like traits were linked to poorer inhibitory control. We also found that the typical advantage in statistical learning associated with weaker inhibition became reduced as ADHD-like traits increased.

The results suggest that ADHD-like traits reshape the interaction between cognitive control and predictive learning processes, supporting a dimensional view of ADHD.

Objective: Adaptive behavior relies on a dynamic balance between flexible, goal-directed control, and efficient, automatic processes. This equilibrium is often ...

05/04/2026

A kutatásunk kapott egy kis média visszhangot. Gratula, Zsuzsi Pesthy !

https://telex.hu/techtud/2026/04/04/kannabisz-fuggoseg-rekreacios-hasznalat-munkamemoria-magyar-kutatas

Teodóra Vékony Bernadette Kun Krisztina Berta

Az ELTE kutatói megnézték, hogyan rontja a felnőttek kognitív képességeit az alkalmi és a függőség határát elérő cannabishasználat – csak utóbbinál találtak problémát, és ott sem minden téren.

12/03/2026

Our new preprint is out!

We wanted to understand how the brain builds and updates predictions while learning. To get closer to this process in real time, we developed an eye-tracking method that follows anticipatory gaze movements trial by trial during probabilistic learning.

The exciting part is that the results suggest something important: learning may not simply be driven by prediction errors in a straightforward way. Instead, people seem to update their internal models rather conservatively, with a strong tendency to keep previously formed expectations stable even in noisy environments.

So this is both a new method and, hopefully, a new way of thinking about how learning unfolds moment by moment.

Preprint here:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.09.710486v1

Very happy to share this work.

Orsolya Pesthy Flóra Hann Cintia Nagy Zita Nagy

27/02/2026

New paper out!

Really happy to share our latest work (led by Zsuzsanna Pesthy and Krisztina Berta), just published in Comprehensive Psychiatry:

Pesthy, Z. V., Berta, K., Vékony, T., Farkas, B. C., Németh, D., & Kun, B. (2026). Dissociating the cognitive underpinnings of recreational cannabis use from problematic use. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 147, 152685.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2026.152685

We tackled a simple but surprisingly unresolved question:
What actually differentiates recreational cannabis use from problematic use at the cognitive level?

The literature often treats “cannabis users” as one group. But that’s clearly not how the real world works.
So we took a broader approach—looking at both executive functions and implicit learning, and more importantly, how they interact.
What did we find?
❗ No global cognitive deficit in cannabis users
❗ No impairment in implicit learning
❗ No clear deficits in inhibition or flexibility
👉 Instead, one very specific difference emerged:
People with problematic use showed reduced complex working memory capacity.
That’s it.
Not a general breakdown of cognition. Not a collapse of control.
A selective vulnerability.

Congrats, Zsuzsi Pesthy Krisztina Berta Teodóra Vékony Bernadette Kun Bence Farkas !!!

04/02/2026

Our new article has just been published in Cerebral Cortex.

In this study, we show that frontal midline theta synchronization plays a causal role in how the brain updates learned statistical regularities—not by improving raw performance, but by enhancing cognitive flexibility and adaptive prediction.

Using tACS, eye-tracking, and a probabilistic learning paradigm, we demonstrate that synchronized theta activity helps the brain disengage from outdated predictions and more efficiently adapt to new ones.

📌 Key takeaway:
Learning is not just about acquiring regularities—it’s about flexibly updating internal models when the environment changes.

doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhaf346

Huge thanks to all co-authors and collaborators across Spain, France, Hungary, and Norway.

Adrienn Holczer Orsolya Pesthy Teodóra Vékony és Gábor Csifcsák

Abstract. Frontal midline theta oscillations are key neural markers for learning, set-shifting, and adaptive behavior, signaling cognitive control and the

22/01/2026

🧠 New opinion article in Cognitive Science

In our recent reply article, we revisit a key assumption in developmental research on statistical learning: that it remains stable across childhood.

We argue that this conclusion crucially depends on methodology. Cross-sectional designs can mask genuine developmental change, while longitudinal evidence tells a different story. Tracking the same individuals across years reveals a gradual decline in implicit statistical learning, alongside growing interindividual differences and increasing involvement of executive functions.

Our key message is simple but important:
👉 Developmental trajectories cannot be inferred reliably without longitudinal data and careful consideration of what cognitive processes a task actually recruits. There are no “process-pure” measures—and this matters, especially in developmental science.

We hope this contribution helps sharpen the interpretation of age effects in learning, predictive processing, and skill acquisition.

In a recent article in Cognitive Science, Rogachev et al. (2025) presented a cross-sectional investigation of visual statistical learning (SL) in children aged 3–9 years and concluded that implicit S...

20/12/2025

Our recent research on mind wandering is discussed in the latest issue of Cerveau et Psycho, a French science magazine focusing on brain and cognition.
The article presents current perspectives on mind wandering and its role in cognition for a broader, non-academic audience.

For those interested, the piece can be read here:

https://stm.cairn.info/magazine-cerveau-psycho-2025-11-page-18?lang=fr

Teodóra Vékony Bianka Brezóczki Peter Simor Bence Farkas Csifcsák

Se laisser emporter par ses pensées, la tête dans les nuages, ne serait pas aussi inutile qu’on le croit. En fait, notre cerveau serait alors dans un état favorable pour pratiquer un apprentissage dit « implicite »…