keynote spEakers
Prof Maria Wimber
School of Psychology & Neuroscience, Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging (CCNi), University of Glasgow
How the reconstruction of
simple event memories dynamically unfolds in human brain and behaviour
How does the human brain recreate vivid mental images of past events? The talk will give an overview of our work investigating how memory reconstruction dynamically unfolds in time, using pattern analysis of electrophysiological and fMRI data as well as behavioural reaction time analyses. The results highlight two prominent characteristics of memory recall. First, when the hippocampus reactivates a previously stored visual memory, the information flow in neocortex tends to follow a reverse feature processing hierarchy compared to initial perception, starting with the reconstruction of high-level conceptual image features and ending with low-level perceptual detail. We also find consistent evidence for a representational shift towards conceptual features (“semanticisation”) over longer consolidation periods and with repeated, active recall. Second, memory reactivation is rhythmic, as visible in brain and behaviour, in line with models suggesting that the hippocampal theta rhythm orchestrates the timing of memory reactivation relative to incoming sensory input. Our most recent findings demonstrate that phase coding along the theta rhythm can help segregate overlapping, competing memories. Together, these findings emphasise the dynamic and reconstructive nature of our memories.
Biography
Maria Wimber is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience & Memory at the Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging (CCNi), University of Glasgow. Her group’s work is centred around the question how the human brain reconstructs memories of past events, and how these memories adaptively change over time and with repeated use. Her group uses behaviour, EEG/MEG, fMRI, and intracranial EEG to isolate the neural footprints of memories and track their dynamic changes over time. Maria obtained her PhD from the University of Regensburg in 2008, working on neural mechanisms of forgetting. Following two postdocs, one at the University of Magdeburg and one at the MRC Cognition & Brain Science Unit in Cambridge, she took up a tenure-track position at the University of Birmingham in 2013, before moving to sunny Scotland in 2020.
https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/psychologyneuroscience/staff/mariawimber/
https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/psychologyneuroscience/research/ccni/
Twitter: @MarWimber
Mastodon: @mariawimber@fediscience.org
Prof Rik Henson
Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, based at the MRC CBU
The value of sharing MEG for studying ageing in the
CamCAN cohort of healthy adult ageing.
In 2011-12, Phase 2 of the CamCAN cohort (www.cam-can.org) collected MEG data (VectorView system) from N~700 population-derived, healthy adults aged 18-88, in addition to MRI (including T1, DWI, fMRI), cognitive, lifestyle and genetic data. In 2016, the data were made available on approval (after request from https://camcan-archive.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/dataaccess/), and have been downloaded by >2500 researchers around the world (as well as being available on DPUK servers). In 2023-24, Phase 5 of CamCAN acquired repeat MEG (Triux) data on N~130 of the same volunteers, i.e, after a ~12 year lag (as well as repeat MRI, cognitive, lifestyle data, etc), which will be made available soon for longitudinal analysis. The baseline and follow-up MEG data were recorded during ~8mins of eyes-closed rest and ~8mins of a simple audio-visual-motor task, while the follow-up also recorded MEG data during ~8 mins of movie-watching (fMRI data also exist on the same three “tasks”). MEG data on more specialised cognitive tasks (e.g., auditory mismatch, scene repetition, Stop Signal/GoNogo, picture naming, word recognition and auditory stories) are available on subsets of N~120 participants in Phase 3 and/or Phase 5. In this talk, I will review some of the papers published on these MEG data, illustrating their potential value.
Biography
My primary interest concerns how our brains enable our cognition, particularly memory, and how this changes in old age and dementia. To investigate this, I develop cognitive tasks and relate them to data from brain imaging, including structural and functional MRI and EEG/MEG.