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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.
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
