Understanding bases of working memory is our research goal. To achieve this goal, it is essential to know how working memory represents memoranda. Using a distraction in conjunction with working memory tasks, we recently found that the working memory changes its representation gradually as a task progress.

 While understanding a story, people build and update their event models. We have devised a new encoding task using naturalistic stimuli, requiring participants to integrate incomplete narrative information. Participants demonstrated an enrichment of their event models, and the TPJ and PCC play a central role in integrating information for event model. Currently, our focus is identifying the behavioral and neural signatures of memory updating to explore the dynamics of event model construction. 

 Do people really rest during breaks? Well, it doesn't seem so, especially after learning something. We want to explore how neural patterns change as learning progresses by examining similarities and differences of neural patterns between learning periods and breaks, using EEG microstate analysis. 

 We always navigate in a first-person view, but humans show a remarkable ability to construct an internal representation of the environment - a ‘cognitive map’. This internal map helps us to successfully navigate (e.g. detour) in real-world, but little is known how it is built. Our research aims to delineate how past experiences shape structural knowledge in spatial environment, and how we flexibly plan ahead to reach a goal.