Azahara Oliva Gonzalez
Cornell University, NY·Neuroscience
How can the brain keep learning new things without overwriting what it already knows? During sleep, the hippocampus, a brain region key for memory, replays recent experiences during sharp-wave ripples (SWRs), brief bursts of activity that help store memories.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
- Topics
memory consolidation
sleep
hippocampus
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2030
What they work on
- Investigate the mechanisms by which recent memories are replayed during sharp-wave ripples in contracted-pupil substates of NREM sleep, using hippocampal electrophysiology with pupillometry in naturally sleeping mice.
- Determine how replay of older memories during dilated-pupil NREM substates stays separate from consolidation of recent memories, so that new learning does not interfere with existing knowledge.
- Test the behavioral role of each pupil-defined sleep substate by using closed-loop disruption of sharp-wave ripples and measuring later recall on a hippocampus-dependent memory task.
More about the research
Older memories are replayed during sleep too, which raises the question of how the brain keeps new, fragile memories from interfering with old ones. One idea is that sleep has a hidden fine structure, with different substates handling different kinds of memory.
Why it matters
Memory deficits feature in many mental health conditions. Pupil size is easy to measure in people. Linking pupil-defined sleep substates to how memories are integrated or kept separate could advance understanding of these conditions and could inform diagnostic methods used in humans.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Erin Wamsley
Furman University, SC·Neuroscience
Test whether memories are reactivated and strengthened during seconds-long periods of waking rest, as they are during sleep, using EEG combined with measures of pupil size, reported thoughts and behavior.
LIla Davachi
Columbia University, NY·Neuroscience
Test whether ending a STEM lecture with a visuospatial rather than a verbal summary enhances offline neural replay, the brain's reactivation of recent learning during rest, measured with fMRI right after learning.
Genevieve Albouy
University of Utah, UT·Neuroscience
Test whether temporal interference stimulation (TIS), a non-invasive way to stimulate deep brain regions, applied to the hippocampus enhances offline motor sequence learning in young healthy adults, compared with sham stimulation.
The school
Cornell University: 37 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 537 research doctorates a year.
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