Research Symposium

BIO

My current research interests include the underlying neural mechanisms behind different aspects of human cognition, like memory, perception, and learning, and how sleep contributes to these aspects. My future aspirations are to attend graduate school to obtain a PhD in cognitive neuroscience studying these topics.

The neural basis of task-relevant memory retrieval

Abstract

Semantic and Episodic memory are two forms of declarative memory. These memory systems differ substantially from one another at the level of content; semantic memory reflects knowledge abstracted from multiple experiences whereas episodic memory reflects memory for specific moments. Cognitive neuroscience research studying how semantic and episodic memory are supported by the brain has traditionally focused on either one system or the other. However, an emerging line of evidence suggests that the perirhinal cortex (PRC) contributes to both of these fundamentally different kinds of memory. In the current study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to quantify activity in PRC while participants retrieve either semantic or episodic information from memory. Using a representational similarity analysis, we first ask whether information in this brain region is dynamically reshaped to reflect task demands. We expect that semantic information will be most salient during the semantic task context and that episodic information will be most salient during the episodic task context. In a second set of analyses, we investigate whether this representational flexibility emerges through interactions with cognitive control mechanisms. Using a functional connectivity analysis, we expect to reveal task-dependent interactions between PRC and the inferior frontal gyrus during retrieval of semantic memory and the PRC and ventromedial prefrontal cortex when task demands require retrieval of episodic memory. These results will suggest the semantic and episodic memories are more deeply integrated than was previously thought and reveal a neural mechanism that flexibly enables retrieval of one kind of information or the other.

Keywords: Cognitive Neuroscience, Memory, fMRI, Recollection, Semantic