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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

cognitive neuroscience, long-term memory, pattern separation

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

Psychology

Abstract

Memory is an essential cognitive ability. It allows us to use past events to guide future actions. Research in my laboratory focuses on determining the mechanics of how the brain remembers what it does. We are interested in determining what will be remembered and what will be forgotten. Specifically, my research focuses on one aspect of memory encoding that allows us to form distinct memory representations for stimuli and events that are very similar. For example, the location where you parked your car this morning is probably very similar to the location where you parked your car many times before. In spite of this similarity, the brain is able to lay down a new, unique representation that allows us to find the right parking spot at the end of the day. The process whereby the brain (and specifically, the hippocampus) does this is called pattern separation.

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