Innovators in
Cognitive Neuroscience

Asieh Zadbood

Columbia University

December 12, 2022 at 2:30 PM ET

Title:
Bridging past and future: how neural representations of events are encoded, recalled, transmitted, and updated

Abstract:
"Facing the rich and continuous stream of information in daily life, our brain is constantly involved in a complex set of processes to connect past and present. In each moment in time, we use our prior knowledge and memories of the world to better comprehend newly acquired information. This new knowledge may in turn cause updating of the previously encoded events to maintain the most accurate interpretation of the world. Ultimately, this whole process will influence future predictions and behavior. But how does the brain support these functions? I approach this complex question by introducing a series of fMRI experiments designed to capture the dynamicity and richness of real-life experiences. I will demonstrate evidence for involvement of the default mode network in modality independent and event-specific processing of movie scenes during encoding, recall, and transmission of information to other people. In addition, I will show how surprising new information changes the representations of the event memories in the brain."

American Sign language (ASL) interpretation will be provided.