Mariam Aly
Assistant Professor (begining July 1, 2017)
Ph.D.,
University of California, Davis 2013
General Area of Research
Interactions between attention, perception, and memory in the brain and in
behavior
Current Research
How are percepts transformed to memories, and how do we use
memory to guide perception and action? I study the mechanisms by which attention
and perception allow us to remember the world around us, and how — once we have
formed those memories — we can use them to guide our attention, perception, and
goal-directed behavior in the future.
To address these questions, I rely on multiple methods that
together give us a holistic understanding of behavior and the brain. These
methods include behavioral studies of healthy young individuals, behavioral
studies of healthy older adults, studies of patients with brain lesions (e.g.,
as a result of epilepsy, stroke, hypoxia, tumors), and high-resolution
functional neuroimaging (fMRI) with advanced multi-voxel pattern analysis and
functional connectivity techniques.
These methods have allowed me to answer questions such as: what
is the role of "memory systems", like the hippocampus, in perception? How does
attention modulate the hippocampus, and how does that affect what we remember
later on? How does the brain learn and remember temporal structure in the world,
and how does it use that structure to generate predictions about the future?
Together, my research helps elucidate the multifaceted and
inherently interactive nature of cognition, bringing us closer to understanding
the whole of the mind and brain as well as its parts.
Relevant Publications
Aly M, Turk-Browne NB. (2016). Attention promotes episodic encoding by stabilizing hippocampal representations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113, E420-E429.
Aly M, Turk-Browne NB. (2016). Attention stabilizes representations in the human hippocampus. Cerebral Cortex, 26, 783-796.
Aly M, Ranganath C, Yonelinas AP. (2013). Detecting changes in scenes: The hippocampus is critical for strength- based perception. Neuron, 78, 1127-37
Aly M, Yonelinas AP. (2012). Bridging consciousness and cognition in memory and perception: Evidence for both state and strength processes. PLoS ONE, 7(1):e30231, 1-16.
Columbia University
Psychology Dept.
406 Schermerhorn
1190 Amsterdam Avenue MC 5501
New York, NY 10027
Phone:
212-854-3608
Fax:
212-854-3609
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