97. Arne Ekstrom: Spatial navigation, memory, and invasive recordings in humans

May 24, 2024

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Arne Ekstrom is a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, where he studies spatial navigation and memory. We talk about how he got into psychology, his unusual path to getting a PhD, his work on using single-cells recordings from people, the relationship between memory and spatial navigation, why he uses multiple methods, and much more.

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Timestamps
0:00:00: How Arne ended up studying psychology and neuroscience
0:06:23: Arne's route to a PhD recording single-cells in humans (via political activism in Central America)
0:20:18: The state of using VR-like tasks in the early 2000s
0:24:32: The status of spatial navigation research in the early 2000s
0:29:45: Collecting data from unusual populations
0:33:59: Why record from amygdala for a spatial navigation task?
0:41:35: Combining memory and navigation in hippocampus
1:02:04: Should I use one method or many?
1:11:29: A book or paper more people should read
1:13:51: Something Arne wishes he'd learnt sooner
1:14:51: Advice for PhD students/postdocs

Podcast links

Website: https://geni.us/bjks-pod
Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-pod-twt

Arne's links

Website: https://geni.us/ekstrom-web
Google Scholar: https://geni.us/ekstrom-scholar

Ben's links

Website: https://geni.us/bjks-web
Google Scholar: https://geni.us/bjks-scholar
Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-twt

References & links

Episode with Lynn Nadel: https://geni.us/bjks-nadel
Episode with Nanthia Suthana: https://geni.us/bjks-suthana
Episode with Nikolai Axmacher: https://geni.us/bjks-axmacher
Episode with Nachum Ulanovsky: https://geni.us/bjks-ulanovsky

Argyropoulos ... & Butler (2019). Network-wide abnormalities explain memory variability in hippocampal amnesia. Elife.
Ekstrom, .. & Fried (2003). Cellular networks underlying human spatial navigation. Nature.
Ekstrom ... & Kahana (2005). Human hippocampal theta activity during virtual navigation. Hippocampus.
Ekstrom ... & Bookheimer (2009). Correlation between BOLD fMRI and theta-band local field potentials in the human hippocampal area. J neurophys.
Ekstrom ... & Starrett (2017). Interacting networks of brain regions underlie human spatial navigation: a review and novel synthesis of the literature. J neurophys.
Ekstrom & Ranganath (2018). Space, time, and episodic memory: The hippocampus is all over the cognitive map. Hippocampus.
Hassabis ... & Maguire (2009). Decoding neuronal ensembles in the human hippocampus. Current Biology.
Iaria & Burles (2016). Developmental topographical disorientation. TiCS.
Kunz ... & Axmacher (2015). Reduced grid-cell–like representations in adults at genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Science.
Logothetis ... & Oeltermann (2001). Neurophysiological investigation of the basis of the fMRI signal. Nature.
Watrous ... & Ekstrom (2013). Frequency-specific network connectivity increases underlie accurate spatiotemporal memory retrieval. Nat Neuro.
Zhang & Ekstrom (2013). Human neural systems underlying rigid and flexible forms of allocentric spatial representation. Human brain mapping.