How Modular Is the Brain?

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Mariam Aly runs the Aly lab at Columbia University, where she studies the interaction of memory, attention, and perception in brain regions like the hippocampus. The short story is that memory affects our perceptions, attention affects our memories, memories affect our attention, and these effects have signatures in neural activity measurements in our hippocampus and other brain areas. We discuss her experiments testing the nature of those interactions. We also discuss a particularly difficult stretch in Mariam's graduate school years, and how she now prioritizes her mental health.

• Aly Lab.
• Twitter: @mariam_s_aly.
• Related papers
  • Attention promotes episodic encoding by stabilizing hippocampal representations.
  • The medial temporal lobe is critical for spatial relational perception.
  • Cholinergic modulation of hippocampally mediated attention and perception.
  • Preparation for upcoming attentional states in the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex.
  • How hippocampal memory shapes, and is shaped by, attention.
  • Attentional fluctuations and the temporal organization of memory.

0:00 - Intro 3:50 - Mariam's background 9:32 - Hippocampus history and current science 12:34 - hippocampus and perception 13:42 - Relational information 18:30 - How much memory is explicit? 22:32 - How attention affects hippocampus 32:40 - fMRI levels vs. stability 39:04 - How is hippocampus necessary for attention 57:00 - How much does attention affect memory? 1:02:24 - How memory affects attention 1:06:50 - Attention and memory relation big picture 1:07:42 - Current state of memory and attention 1:12:12 - Modularity 1:17:52 - Practical advice to improve attention/memory 1:21:22 - Mariam's challenges