Memory

• Why is some information remembered vividly after only one experience, while other information can be studied over and over again, yet leave us with only a vague sense of familiarity with the material? 

• Why is it that some of our most embarrassing mistakes are the ones that seem to leave the strongest and longest-lasting memories? 

• Why do we sometimes feel so confident that we experienced something, when in reality we did not and perhaps only "imagined" it?

Episodic memory concerns information that we can "consciously recollect" at retrieval (vividly remember in an autobiographical way), as opposed to information that we recognize on the basis of a less vivid, less personal feeling of "familiarity." This research program addresses the role of attention and emotion in creating strong episodic memories. We are also examining the means by which the compromised attentional capacities of populations such as young subjects with traumatic brain injury and normal older adults specifically impair conscious recollection, while leaving less-conscious forms of retrieval, such as familiarity, intact. Finally, we are interested in the encoding and retrieval processes underlying "false recollection," or situations when one believes (sometimes quite strongly!) that a novel event has been experienced previously.
 

Event-Related Potential Studies of Memory Normal Aging and Memory Traumatic Brain Injury and Memory