Psychology – Eichenbaum

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:Howard Eichenbaum uses animal models to study brain mechanisms of declarative memory. One approach involves psychological testing of animals with damage or molecular knockouts in specific cortical or hippocampal areas. A complementary approach involves recordings from single neurons and neuronal ensembles in the cortex and hippocampus of animals performing memory tasks. These approaches converge in testing the hypothesis that the cerebral cortex maintains representations of specific facts and events, whereas the hippocampus mediates the organization of these representations. This functional circuitry supports fundamental features of episodic memory and flexible expression of memories across a variety of contexts.Students play a key role in projects by assisting in:
animal training
neurosurgery
histological preparations of brain tissue
building microelectrodes
data analysis

Further lab information and a link to an application may be found at http://www.bu.edu/cogneuro/.