cognitive neuroscience of memory and aging

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This reading and discussion based seminar involves reading seminal research papers on the neural mechanisms of human memory, how memory processes change across the adult lifespan in normal/healthy aging and in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias that affect memory and cognition, and how memory functioning may be enhanced by compensatory and restorative interventions including pharmacological, encoding/retention/retrieval strategies, cognitive/brain training (e.g., with neurofeedback), noninvasive brain stimulation, and lifestyle (diet, exercise, stress, sleep, music, dance, intergenerational mentorship etc.) interventions. We will focus on working memory, episodic memory, and prospective memory, and their supporting neurocognitive mechanisms. The course will emphasize recent advances in experimental neuropsychology/cognitive neurology, neuroimaging, and non-invasive brain stimulation techniques, including neurotech applications using machine learning/AI algorithms to decode memory representations in the brain in real-time and administer neurofeedback or brain stimulation to augment memory processing.