Freedberg Action, Learning, and Cognitive Neuroscience (FALCON) Lab

Current Projects

Uncovering how memory network interactions affect learning and memory

The brain is organized into networks that support different cognitive functions, such as memory. For example, a distributed network of  hippocampal-cortical  connections supports the encoding, storage, and retrieval of episodic memories (i.e. memory for personally experienced facts, events, and objects), whereas striato-thalamic-cortical  circuits support procedural learning (i.e. memory skill and habit learning). However, these networks also interact to support episodic and procedural memory. The FALCON lab seeks to understand how these networks interact by stimulating these networks with rTMS and measuring how connectivity between networks and memory change.

Developing targeted treatments to reverse age-related memory decline and rescue memory in patients with neurological disorders.

Patients with neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer’s, and mental health disorders, such as major depression, experience memory loss. Currently, there are no effective treatments capable of mitigating memory deficits in these populations. A central goal of the lab is to use rTMS to develop noninvasive brain stimulation interventions to mitigate the effects of memory loss by identifying mechanisms that support memory in healthy younger adults and determining how these mechanisms break down patients with memory loss.

Understanding real-world episodic and procedural learning.

Sometimes episodic and procedural memories are acquired independently. For example, learning history facts in school leads to the formation of episodic memories, and less so procedural ones. The opposite is true when learning how to throw a baseball. Laboratory studies of these memory types are organized very similar to these settings: studying one in the absence of the other. However, many everyday tasks like driving, writing, reading, and even dancing involve forming both types of memories at the same time. In the case of dancing, one must consciously learn the dance steps they will perform, while also learning the skill of coordinating ones limbs. The FALCON laboratory seeks to understand how people are able to learn these two types of memories at the same time and what factors prevent people from doing so in order to form a more ecologically valid model of human memory.