Neuroscience of Memory and Flexible Cognition Laboratory at Smith College

Our Research

We are a cognitive neuroscience lab that aims to understand how the brain supports episodic memory (i.e., memory for unique events from our personal past). Scientists think of episodic memory not as a video camera that allows us to play a literal recording of a past experience, but instead as a constructive process: we remember only bits and pieces of an event (e.g., the who, what, when, and where) and flexibly link them together rebuilding the original episode (akin to a jigsaw puzzle). This flexibility in memory however makes our memories prone to distortion (akin to forgetting where you parked your car in a garage).

The question that motivates our research program is: Why is episodic memory supported by processes that leave it prone to error and failure?

To answer this question, our lab takes an adaptive perspective to studying episodic memory. According to this perspective, the constructive nature of episodic memory which leaves it error-prone also serves a beneficial (i.e., adaptive) role. Our research program has indicated that episodic memory – and the cognitive and neural processes supporting it – play a broader functional-adaptive role in supporting other forms of flexible cognition that also rely on constructive processes . Specifically, our research program has shown that constructive memory processes are engaged in helpful ways during tasks that extend beyond simple remembering  including certain kinds of imagination, creative thinking, and problem solving (for recent findings; Thakral et al., in press, Creativity Research Journal; Thakral et al., 2023, Memory & Cognition; Thakral et al., 2021, Cognition).

Our Research Approach

From Laboratory to Real-World

We use controlled laboratory experiments with high degree of experimental control over the learning experience, and thus a better measure of the corresponding memory experience and associated neural processes.  But we are equally interested in the real world extensions of our findings, assessed through autobiographical memory, everyday imagination, creative thinking, and problem solving.

Measuring Brain Activity

We use three of the main techniques in the field of cognitive neuroscience: functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and event-related potentials (ERPs). 

fMRI provides excellent spatial resolution and can be used to assess which neural regions are associated with a given process, ERPs provide excellent temporal resolution and can be used to assess when different processes are engaged, and TMS provides the opportunity to assess the necessity of a given neural region for a given cognitive process.  Our goal is to create a model of episodic memory function that comprehensively accounts for insights from all available methods. We believe that this goal is better served by combining evidence from manipulation and correlational methods to provide convergent or divergent evidence for theories of memory function.

NMFC Lab logo courtesy of Sonya Moo