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Brown, Thackery

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    40 Hz Gamma Sensory Stimulation Effects on Memory Performance in Cognitively Healthy Older Adults
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-04) Davis, Katie ; DeWal, Jyotleen ; Kemp, Megan ; Salen, Ashley ; Brown, Thackery ; He, Qiliang
    Recent studies have demonstrated that a gamma sensory stimulation, light and sound flickering at 40 Hz, decreased Alzheimer’s symptoms and pathology in mice. Subsequent human trials showed similar results. Here we focus on preliminary behavioral results of a study in which cognitively healthy older adults use either the flicker intervention, or a control intervention consisting of constant light and sound, for one hour per day for 8 weeks. Participants will complete a face-name-occupation memory task, a spatial memory test using virtual reality (VR), and a line-detection task before and after the 8 weeks. It is hypothesized that there will be greater improvements in episodic, long-term, and spatial memory for those using the flicker. So far, preliminary data has shown both groups have higher accuracy in episodic memory after 8 weeks, likely due to learning effects. Preliminary spatial memory data demonstrates that flickering participants have a similar spatial error after 8 weeks, while those in the control group have increased spatial error. Preliminary data also shows the flickering group has similar memory performance after 8 weeks, while those in the control group are more prone to retrieval errors. There is no statistical significance in the current data analysis, but these patterns may become significant once sample size increases (N = 11). Based on current results, it is expected that the flicker group will have fewer spatial memory deficits and fewer long-term memory retrieval errors, and these results could give insight into flicker effectiveness in cognitively healthy older adults.
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    Mechanisms of Mapping Space in Human Memory
    ( 2018-10-01) Brown, Thackery
    1) We are interested in understanding the neural and cognitive events that give rise to episodic memory, and the factors that influence the efficacy of the declarative memory system in both health and disease. One such factor is psychological stress, which data suggest can disrupt relevant neural networks at various levels. Consequently, by altering memory function, stress from health, social, economic, and other challenges may have a significant impact on daily function. We are developing experiments to quantify how stress influences the detail with which memories are both formed and retrieved, and test predictions about how such changes relate to network-level mechanisms in the brain. One of our goals will be to expand the scope of this research from short-term impacts of stress to understanding how anxiety-related disorders and the long-term experience of stress affect both structure and function underlying memory and planning. 2) People vary widely in their memory and navigation abilities, but the neural bases for these individual differences are not well understood. We are interested in neural and cognitive traits that influence inherent processing abilities, as well as differences in processing strategies that impact memory and behavior. In keeping with a systems-level perspective of memory, considerable variance in individual abilities may relate to 1) structural and functional integrity within hippocampal subfield circuitry, which can impact the detail and discriminability of memories, and 2) network differences in how frontostriatal circuitry, along with parietal attention mechanisms, interacts with the hippocampus. These network differences may have widespread impacts on how individuals allocate cognitive resources towards memory and behavior, and mediate the impact of memory-influencing factors such as stressors. 3) In stimulus rich, real-world settings, numerous contextual signals may vie for control of attention and influence what is stored in memory. Extant evidence from rodents suggests that memories may be structured within contextual hierarchies (e.g., memories for a building are stored in relation to the town in which it resides). A broad goal for our research is to understand how spatial and non-spatial memory are structured in humans; preliminary data from our research suggests that contextually grounded hierarchies may be an organizing principle for functions along the rostro-caudal axis of the hippocampus. Our research aims to delineate how contextual traces interact to govern memory formation and retrieval, and to test the mechanisms that allow humans to both flexibly access distinct memories and to use associative structures to generalize across experiences.