CNS 2021 Guest Post by Chelsie (Miko) Hart Memory, aesthetics, inhibitory control, visual perception, film, photography, and poetry — these were just a few of the themes on display on the last day of CNS 2021 and all brought together through a single remarkable individual, Art Shimamura. A founding member of CNS who passed away […]
Aging Amplifies the Retention of Irrelevant Info in Our Memory
In the 1990s, research led by Lynn Hasher, then at Duke University, identified some stark differences in how older and younger adults interpret narrative passages. They found that when reading passages, older adults form the same inferences that young adults do and when interpretations turn out to be wrong, both groups are able to correct […]
Exercise Adds Up to Big Brain Boosts
CNS 2019 Press Release March 24, 2019 – Anyone who trains for a marathon knows that individual running workouts add up over time to yield a big improvement in physical fitness. So, it should not be surprising that the cognitive benefits from workouts also accumulate to yield long-term cognitive gains. Yet, until now, there was […]
Time for Understanding Time in the Brain
CNS 2019 “Time is passing too fast!” Many of us use that phrase every day when we feel like our kids are growing up fast or when a deadline sneaks up on us. When Virginie van Wassenhove hears that phrase, it conjures an entirely different point of view. She goes straight to consciousness, musing on […]
Putting Together the Puzzle of Adaptive Constructive Memory
Q&A with Daniel Schacter The image most often used to describe how memory works is that of a video recorder retaining impressions in real time of each event, and your brain then plays back those impressions when calling up a memory. But that is but a memory myth. The image Harvard cognitive neuroscientist Daniel Schacter […]
Clinically-Driven to Study Memory
Q&A with Muireann Irish Clinical populations can provide a wealth of data to cognitive neuroscientists working to understand the brain. By seeing what happens in the brain of someone who has a cognitive disorder, researchers can better identify the fundamental underlying mechanisms. That is certainly true for memory research, where individuals with dementia and Alzheimer’s […]
A Dynamic Approach to Understanding Age-Related Memory Decline
Matthew Costello has been studying how aging affects cognition and perception for close to 10 years. But answers to the questions of exactly how and why visual working memory declines in older adults have still eluded him and other researchers. Now, he is taking an information processing approach to this topic that affects so many […]
Breaking Barriers in Brain Stimulation: Q&A with Nanthia Suthana
Nanthia Suthana is working to become fluent in the “language of the brain.” She does not study linguistics but rather that electrical patterns that the brain uses to communicate. She and her team at UCLA seek to alter these patterns by externally stimulating brain cells with electricity – testing its effects on cognition and memory […]
CNS 2018 Day 4 In Brief
It was a great 4 days of science in Boston at CNS 2018! The sun was out and it was warming up outside, while inside participants were treated to the last poster session of the meeting and a wonderful set of final symposia. Talks covered what makes musical rhythm special and sleep’s role in memory […]
Taking Alzheimer’s Research Into the Next Decade
Q&A with Michael Yassa Alzheimer’s is a growing epidemic, with the disease and related dementia affecting some 45 million people worldwide. Although treatment has been elusive, discoveries that advance our understanding of the disease have been coming fast and furious over the last several years, due in no small part to advances in animal and […]
