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--- Core Faculty
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Nadel, Lynn
Regents' Professor
Program: Cognition and Neural Systems
Year of affiliation: 1985
Year of doctor degree: 1967
School: McGill University, Montreal
My research is concerned with the role of the hippocampal formation in learning and memory, and focuses on its particular role in spatial cognition. My earlier work demonstrated that this brain structure was critical for place learning, and is the core of a brain system responsible for creating neural cognitive maps of environments that an animal has explored and must remember.
My current work focuses on five aspects of hippocampal function in spatial cognition: (1)the implications of the fact that this cognitive system matures postnatally, in most species only after some months; (2)the computational mechanisms by which the hippocampus actually accomplishes the sotrage and use of cognitive maps; (3)the way in which the hippocampus interacts with the neocortex in the long-term stabilization of memory; (4)gender differences in spatial cognition; and (5) the way in which this cognitive mapping function in humans is expressed in both nonverbal spatial mapping systems and verbal semantic mapping systems.
This work involves the study of both animals and humans, as well as computer simulation of hippocampal circuitries and their interaction with neocortical systems. It employs standard behavioral techniques in combination with either experimentally-induced brain damage, or developmentally produced disorders of hippocampal function (as in Down syndrome).
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