Overview
I use behavioral and neuroimaging (fMRI) methods to investigate how memory works in the human brain and how it changes with age. My work focuses on understanding the cognitive and neural mechanisms that support episodic memory across the lifespan.
Current Projects
Neural Mechanisms of Associative Memory in Aging
How do we bind together the details of an experience into a coherent memory? This project investigates the neural mechanisms underlying associative memory in younger and older adults, with a particular focus on unitization — the process by which separate elements are integrated into a single cohesive unit. Using fMRI, I examine how this process unfolds in the aging brain and why some memories are better preserved than others.
Methods
I draw on a combination of:
- Behavioral experiments — memory paradigms designed to isolate specific cognitive processes
- fMRI neuroimaging — to identify the neural correlates of memory encoding and retrieval
- Multivariate analyses — to characterize patterns of brain activity associated with memory