research overview
- My research examines the neural and cognitive mechanisms of memory and visual perception. I am interested in the mechanisms of healthy cognition, as well as how these functions are disrupted by aging, or by brain damage in the ventral visual stream and medial temporal lobe. My trainees and I use computational models, fMRI and behavioral studies in humans. Research in my lab asks questions such as: What are the neural mechanisms of visual pattern completion? Does recollection require the hippocampus, or can it be mediated by other parts of the brain? How does interference cause forgetting, and does this change with age? We have also developed novel methods for fMRI analysis, for example using Bayesian hierarchical modeling to characterize the neural-level responses that give rise to the 'voxel tuning functions' observed in visual cortex.