Memory and Space

Memory is at the very heart of our personality: the myriad snapshots of our daily experiences have a pervasive and enduring influence on the self. But how are these memories organized in the brain?

Knowledge about the neural mechanisms underlying spatial memory has been accumulated through electrophysiological studies in rodents. Place and grid cells in the hippocampal formation signal the animal’s position in its environment, but how do they support memory and guide behaviour? By combining functional neuroimaging with virtual reality techniques, we have shown that similar spatial representations exist in the human brain.

Our approach demonstrates the potential of non-invasive neuroimaging technologies to infer the fine-scale properties of neural systems in humans by building on models from single cell electrophysiology. We are now using these proxy measures of cellular aspects of cognition to investigate the specific neural mechanisms of encoding, stabilisation and readout of episodic memories, including translation into research on normal and pathological ageing.

Our research is articulated in three research lines:

• Spatial representation: We want to understand how cell-type specific spatial representations help us to map and navigate our environment. In particular, we use high-field 7T scanning to bridge between cellular and systems level.
• Memory reactivation: Our goal is to unravel the mechanisms (e.g. attractor dynamics) of how our brain reactivates and reconsolidates memories by combining fMRI and MEG with multivoxel-pattern analyses (MVPA).
• Episodic memory: Using novel virtual reality tasks and MVPA, we are investigating how our brain integrates episodic memories into mnemonic networks.

Nederlandstalige website