Cutting-edge Neuroscience
The Translational Neuroscience Laboratory (PI: Mike Yassa) is interested in understanding how brains can store and retrieve massive amounts of information and in using this knowledge to improve the human condition.
We use cutting-edge human neuroscience tools to understand learning and memory in healthy and diseased brains. In particular, we are trying to uncover ways in which our memory abilities change throughout the lifespan from childhood to older adulthood. We are also trying to develop ways to diagnose and treat memory disorders present in patients with progressive diseases like Alzheimer’s disease or mood disorders like depression. More recently, we have begun to explore the impact of lifestyle factors like sleep, diet, and exercise on memory and cognition.
Our toolkit is dynamic and diverse. It includes cross-species brain imaging as well electrical recordings from the brains of epilepsy patients before they undergo neurological surgery. We develop and refine cognitive assessment tools that specifically target learning and memory functions, with the goal of developing improved diagnostic and prognostic tests that we can use in community mental health settings. We also design new tools for imaging and recording brain function to explore its architecture at very fine levels of detail.
We collaborate vigorously and widely with investigators across the globe and provide support with open tool development and data banks to facilitate discovery science.
