Projects

Event Segmentation is the automatic process by which people parse continuous perception into discrete and meaningful events. For example, the event of making coffee could be segmented into its necessary steps: boil water, grind beans, pour water over grounds, pour coffee in a cup. Evidence supports event segmentation as a potentially valuable tool for assessing and treating memory impairments in clinical populations.

Team Lead: Zhijiao Gao

Perceptual Organization enables you to make sense of the world's chaos by grouping elements into cohesive and meaningful shapes and scenes. This project investigates PO in individuals recovering from traumatic brain injury (TBI). PO is critical for higher-order cognition, and disruptions impair object recognition, memory, and executive functioning. We aim to track how PO abilities change across the rehabilitation process and determine whether they can relate to recovery outcomes. Given that individuals with TBI frequently experience diffuse cognitive impairments, understanding the presence and progression of PO deficits in this population is critical.

Team Lead: Alex Ward

What is the relationship between psychological resilience and executive functioning? Are they the same? How do they differ? We are interested in understanding how those in stressful situations (e.g. caregivers of patients with Acquired Brain Injury) adapt to adverse circumstances, how their resilience levels change over time, and how that relates to individual levels of executive function. We are also interested in how stress might be a mediating factor.

Team Lead: Christie Cantor

The relationship between hippocampal functioning and spatial navigation is well documented. Seminal studies have documented hippocampal volume changes following extensive spatial navigation training in London taxi drivers—findings that span decades of research (Siegel & White,1975; Skok, 1999, 2004, 2010; Griesbaur et al., 2021). Our previous pilot study developed a virtual route learning paradigm to differentiate route learning between an explicit and motor-assisted group. Overall, we are interested in learning about the various mechanisms by which people acquire and consolidate spatial information, and creating a task that reliably engages hippocampal activation.

Team Lead: Tyler Ulch