The Preston Lab

12/19/2025

Our Preston Lab 2025 Wrapped is here! 🎉

Hit play to see our year in review, including how many participants helped us study the developing brain, how many hours we spent in the scanner, and the movie that topped our teen participants' watch list.

Thank you to everyone who made this year possible. Our participants, our students, our collaborators. We can't wait to see what we discover together in 2026.

12/16/2025

Ever wonder why your teen can ace a test but then seem completely lost when they need to apply that knowledge somewhere new? New research from our lab may help explain why.

We scanned kids, teens, and adults in the MRI while they played a spatial memory game with friendly monsters. What we found is that the part of the brain that helps us build flexible mental maps of the world is still maturing through adolescence.

Adults in our study could navigate accurately even when the environment shifted. Kids and teens had to relearn locations after each change because their brains are still holding onto each experience separately rather than building one connected map they can use across situations.

One takeaway for parents might be: When our kids struggle to transfer learning from one situation to another, it's not laziness or carelessness. Their brains are still building the architecture for flexible thinking, and that takes time.

If you want to read more about the science, you can read the full paper here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.11.693744v1

12/04/2025

We love connecting with curious minds at UT Hot Science – Cool Talks, hosted by the UT Environmental Science Institute! 🔬

We always have fun sharing the wonders of science with our community & watching their interest spark!

Are you in the Austin area? Check it out: https://www.esi.utexas.edu/community-engagement/hot-science-cool-talks/

11/25/2025

In advance of Thanksgiving, we shared our gratitude for one another in lab meeting. Each lab member drew another lab member's name (gift exchange style). We wrote a message to them to read aloud about why we are grateful for them, what makes us proud of them, and all the ways they make the team stronger.

Hearing the messages was such a sweet, grounding moment. It reminded us how much we rely on one another, how much we grow because of each other, and just how awesome every member of this lab truly is.

I'm truly grateful for this team and how our support of one another makes the science we do possible 💛🧠

11/21/2025

Did you know that encouraging children & teens to manage their schedules independently has positive impacts for their memory? 📅🧠 Our new study reveals that age and independence combine to enhance memory development.

When younger children are asked to describe a typical day in their lives, they mostly describe the order of events, using words like "then" and "before."

Older children and teens talk less about order and instead describe their experiences in terms of schedules and routines.

We found that independence predicted how individuals recalled their lived experience. So children and teens who managed time more independently in their daily lives (getting themselves up, managing their own routines) used more sophisticated temporal language when recalling their experiences.

Overall, our findings suggest that independence predicts memory abilities in ways that age alone doesn't capture.

Do you study memory development? We created a survey tool to help quantify how independently children manage their time in everyday life.

Learn more and ready the full study here: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/68bqk_v1

11/19/2025

What an incredible Society for Neuroscience meeting this year! Lab members Omer, Nicole, and Owen brought their A-game to their poster sessions, drawing engaged crowds as they shared their recent work on how kids and adults remember when things happen, how memory changes impact reasoning, and how we learn context-dependent behaviors.

Beyond the science, it was wonderful to reconnect with colleagues and former students, celebrate with amazing women in neuroscience, and soak in the energy of researchers from across the field. From lively discussions on the poster floor to the obligatory photo op at the iconic SfN sign, this conference reminded us why we love what we do.

So proud of this team!

11/14/2025

The Preston Lab will be at Society for Neuroscience in San Diego! Come see what we've been working on 🧠

We'll be discussing how kids & adults remember when things happen, how changes in memory representation across the lifespan impact reasoning & how we learn that different actions have different consequences based on the setting.

Find us Monday & Wednesday 🤘

11/12/2025

🧠 Did you know that kids remember time differently than adults?

Our lab just published a new preprint review led by grad student Owen Friend with Dr. Jeni Pathman exploring how children, teens, and adults remember “when” events occurred in fundamentally different ways. These differences have real and important implications for juvenile justice. When children are witnesses in legal cases, we ask them detailed questions about when events occurred. But if we don't understand HOW kids remember time at different ages, we might misjudge their credibility when they're actually doing the best their developing brains allow.

So what are these differences?

Young children (ages 4-9) remember events like separate snapshots. They know what happened, but struggle to connect memories together in time.

Teenagers begin to recognize patterns as their brains mature, but they struggle to apply this knowledge flexibly in new situations.

By early adulthood, the brain can finally access both specific details AND general patterns about timing, depending on what's needed.

These fundamental differences show that we need developmentally appropriate approaches when asking children about WHEN something happened, so we can make sure to evaluate their memory fairly rather than through an adult lens of timestamping.

Read our full review here: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/n8m4v_v1

11/06/2025

Met a celebrity the other day! Bevo XV is the best mascot🤘🐂

10/30/2025

Big thanks to Thinkery for hosting us at their STEAM Sunday Halloween celebration! 🎃

We love connecting with families and future scientists while sharing what we do at the Preston Lab 🤘

10/21/2025

How do we organize our memories, and how does new information fit in? Think of memory schemas as mental filing cabinets that store and organize all the information in our minds.

Curious? Check out Dr. Preston's Brain Inspired podcast to learn more!

Ali Preston on how the neuroscience of schemas, which help us form memories, integrate and differentiate information, and make predictions.Show notes: https...

10/10/2025

We are very proud to share that our graduate student, Omer Ashmaig, has successfully defended his dissertation proposal!

His dissertation will explore the development of
context-dependent representations that support adaptive behaviors, and he will use both neuroimaging and computational modeling to investigate these important and interesting questions! This is a huge milestone, Congratulations Omer!