Edward E. Smith

William B. Ransford Professor of Psychology
Columbia University
1190 Amsterdam Ave., MC 5501
402B Schemerhorn Hall
New York, NY 10027

212 854 1789 (tel)
212 854 3609 (fax)
eesmith@psych.columbia.edu

Research Interests

I am interested in the cognitive and neural bases of working memory, a system that briefly stores and processes information on line; this mechanism seems to lie at the heart of higher mental processes. Recently, I have been focusing on the "executive processes" associated with working memory, particularly (1) the process of selectively attending to relevant information in memory while inhibiting irrelevant information, and (2) the process of switching attention from one mental representation or process to another.

Much of the research involves the neuroimaging of normal young participants, but some of the research on attentional processes involves studies with special populations, including normal older participants, patients with Alzheimer's Disease (AD), and depressed people. Another fundamental mechanism of interest is our ability to categorize novel objects as instances of familiar categories. This mechanism is central to all aspects of cognition. Again, some of the research involves special populations, including AD patients, frontal patients, and amnesiac patients.

Smith, E. E. (in press). The case for implicit category learning. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience.

Smith, E. E., & Grossman, M. (in press). Multiple systems for category learning. Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews.

Fiebach, C.J., Friederici, A.D., Smith, E.E. & Swinney, D. A. (in press). Infero-temporal cortex maintains conceptual-semantic representations in verbal working memory. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Franklin, M. S., Smith, E.E., & Jonides, J. (2007). Distance effects in memory for sequences: Evidence for estimation and sequencing processes. Memory, 15, 104-116.

Bozoki, A., Grossman, M., & Smith, E. E. (2006). Can patients with AlzheimerÕs Disease learn a category implicitly? Neuropsychologia, 44, 816-827.

Koenig, P., Smith, E. E., Glosser, G., DeVita, C., Moore, P., Mc Millain, C., Gee, J., & Grossman, M. (2005). The neural basis for novel semantic categorization. Neuorimage, 24, 369-383.

Wager, T. D., Jonides, J., Smith, E. E., & Nichols, T. E. (2005). Towards a taxonomy of attention shifting: Individual differences in fMRI during multiple shifts type. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 5, 127-143.

Grossman, M., Smith, E.E., Koenig, P., Glosser, G., Rhee, J., & Dennis, K. (2003). Categorization of object descriptions in AlzheimerÕs disease and frontotemporal demential: limitation in rule-based processing. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 3 , 120-132.

Nelson, J.K., Reuter-Lorenz, P.A., Sylvester, C-Y, Jonides, J., & Smith, E.E. (2003). Dissociable neural mechanisms underlying response-based and familiarity-based conflict in working memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100, 1171-1175.

Wager, T., & Smith, E.E. (2003). Neuroimaging studies of working memory: A meta-analysis. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 3 , 255-274.

Link to SCAN lab at Columbia:

http://www.scan.psych.columbia.edu/ 

 

Updated 4/20/2007