Memory & Cognition Special Talk-bDirect recordings of human place cells and traveling waves for memory mapping and cognitive enhancement

Abstract: 

Memory is essential for everyday human life and, thus, memory dysfunctions are devastating for health and happiness. To explain the neural basis of memory and help people with memory disorders, my lab studies direct brain recordings from neurosurgical patients performing spatial and verbal memory tasks.  I will discuss two sets of studies, which examine how the human brain supports memory encoding and reveal novel patterns in humans compared to animals.  First, using single-neuron recordings, we examined how humans remember spatial locations.  We find that human neurons activate at particular locations during navigation. When a memory is formed the same cells that represent a location during navigation help form memories for those positions.  Second, I will discuss the role of brain oscillations in memory. We find that brain oscillations behave as traveling waves, propagating across the brain in different directions for separate processes such as encoding and retrieval These traveling waves thus reflect the brain’s dynamic reorganization to support aspects of memory.  I will conclude by discussing how we are using these discoveries to help subjects with memory disorders by building new systems for identifying biomarkers of memory and by creating augmented- and virtual-reality systems for measuring memory in real-world environments.