Research Overview

We are a cognitive neuroscience lab in the Department of Psychology and the Program in Neuroscience at Florida State University. Our goal is to develop a deeper understanding of the cognitive and neural bases of human memory. To this end, we use fMRI, EEG, eye tracking, motion tracking, and cognitive experiments to measure brain activity and behavioral expressions of long-term memory. We also explore how memory relates to other aspects of cognition (e.g., perception, decision making, motor control), how it changes across the lifespan, and how it can be enhanced to promote graceful aging. We answer these questions in research conducted with cognitively healthy participants and in individuals with memory disorders.

How does the brain represent the past?

Human long-term memory has no known storage limit. Moreover, the concept of long-term memory encompasses multiple fundamentally different kinds of information about the past and phenomenological retrieval experiences, including the recollection of unique moments in time, recognizing that one stimulus has been encountered more recently than another, and understanding the semantic meaning of the things we encounter and think about. One of our research goals is to reveal how these different kinds of memory relate to one another in the brain. This work is motivated by the idea that a comprehensive account of how different brain regions contribute to memory requires an understanding of the kinds of information they represent.

How does memory interact with other kinds of cognition?

Memory systems did not evolve merely so we can take pleasure in consciously thinking about the past. Rather, memory evolved to allow us to flexibly and adaptively interact with and think about our world. Indeed, memories of our prior experiences influence multiple kinds of cognition, such as perceptual processing, decision making, and motor control. We aim to answer questions about how these different systems interact in service of adaptive behavior. How does the content of semantic memory shape reach trajectories? How does recent exposure influence decision making? In what ways are memory and perception related to one another?

Can we combine insights from cognitive neuroscience with mobile technology to mitigate age-related memory decline?

From the profound (e.g., birth of a child) to the mundane (e.g., assembling Swedish furniture), we have a remarkable ability to mentally travel back in time to re-experience moments from our personal past. The quality of these episodic memories is determined by the extent to which we can vividly recollect event-specific details, an aspect of cognition that is supported by the hippocampus. Unfortunately, hippocampal integrity and the corresponding ability to recollect episodic details declines as we age. These downward trends fundamentally alter how we connect to our personal past. We use a novel, non-invasive memory prosthetic to ask not only how we recall real-world memories across the lifespan, but also as an aid in a fight against age-related memory decline.