News

What do we do when seeing a mix of random objects — a stapler, banana, pile of receipts, and toy dinosaur on a cluttered desk? We start associating everything with everything else by meaning, all at once! Xinchi Yu’s new findings suggest spontaneous semantic grouping may help make our limited visual working memory more efficient. Check out more his upcoming paper in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.

New insights into how visually selective neocortical regions contribute to visual memory consolidation — a case study reported in Learning & Memory. We've learned a great deal from Patient VH, who underwent brain surgery that removed part of his parahippocampal place area, resulting in a reduced ability to consolidate scene-related memories.

Welcome postdoc fellow Dr. Yoojeong Choo, who joins us from U of Iowa in Spring 2024.

New evidence into how the medial temporal lobe contributes to visual short-term memory precision is now published in Hippocampus. Our latest study shows that tDCS over bilateral temporal lobes modulates hippocampal-occipital connectivity, affecting visual memory quality.

Archive

Congrats to lab manager Sanikaa Thakurdesai on her first academic presentation (2024 SfN at Chicago), showcasing a lesion-symptom mapping study on the medial temporal lobe's role in visual short-term memory precision. She also received the 2024 Trainee Professional Development Award from the Society for Neuroscience! An outstanding achievement for an early-career researcher.

Building on Dr. John Wittig Jr.'s foundational research in human single-unit recordings, we teamed up with Dr. Kareem Zaghloul and NINDS colleagues to demonstrate that neurons in the anterior temporal lobe encode semantic information across a representational hierarchy through neuronal sequences in population spiking bursts. This neural code complements the traditional spike rate-based code, suggesting that the human brain uses multiple codes to achieve remarkable computational efficiency. Coming soon in Nature! Featured in UMD’s webpage, here

Congrats to Nathan Wang, a former summer student, on his admission to the MD/PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania! 🎉"

Congrats to Visiting Scholar, Chaoxiong Ye! 🎉 His paper with us on visual memorability is now accepted by Cognition. 📝 Well done!
Welcoming new members in the new semester
- Sanikaa Thakurdesai : Lab manager and full-time research assistant, joining us from University of South Florida
- Xinchi Yu: Current 4th year graduate student in the NACS program & Department of Linguistic., collaborating with us on projects about visual and conceptual aspects of working memory.

In memory of Robert Rosenthal (Bob, 03/02/1933 - 01/05/2024). 🕊️ Deeply saddened by the loss of our mentor & friend, Bob. A beloved father and grandfather, a devoted husband, a stellar scholar, a pillar in our discipline, and a true Pygmalion in the classroom. Bob was a living giant. We're privileged & humbled to have been his students in the past decade. Even in his final days, he helped build our lab, sharing wisdom from generations of esteemed scholars. We're committed to carrying on his legacy with gratitude for the vibrant spirit he brought into our lives. Shine on, Bob! 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Congrats for former NIH trainees, Audrey Phan for her acceptance into the Harvard-MIT MD/PhD joint program.
Congrats for former summer student, Nathan Wang, from John Hopkins for winning the prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship.
We are very pleased to be joined by Jenna Langbein, a medical student from Virginia Commonwealth University, to serve as our research coordinator at University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Honored to share my research journey, training, goals, and mentorship philosophy with NINDS intramural training programs. Committed to providing the best support possible to future trainees. [See report here].

Congrats to Lilian Azer from UC Riverside for publishing an important study on aging and cognitive control at Psychology and Aging.
Our paper on the contribution of the entorhinal-DG/CA3 pathway to visual working/short-term memory is now available in eLife.
Our paper on the causal contribution of the medial temporal lobe to visual short-term memory precision is online at Nature Human Behaviour. See our blog about this article for more information at the Nature Publishing Group.
Our paper on the top-down effect of conceptual association on early visual perception (as early as the pupil level!) is now available in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

Supported by the Accelerated Translational Incubator Pilot (ATIP) Award, from the Institute for Clinical & Translational Research of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, we are working to initiate a new Cognitive Neurophysiology research program in Maryland!

Awarded with the NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00). Extremely grateful for the strong support from the NIH! Very excited to launch my lab soon! Please see a press lease from NINDS.
Our paper on the effortfulness of visual working memory is now accepted by Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. It was a very fun project to work on!

The collaborative project on sleep and neurocognitive development in early adolescence with Drs. Nils Fan Yang & Ze Wang from the University of Maryland School of Medicine has been accepted by The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health. see Press release.

The meta-analysis project on negative emotion and visual working memory precision with Dr. Chaoxiong Ye (University of Jyvaskyla) and Dr. Weiwei Zhang (UC Riveriside) has been accepted by Emotion.