Personal profile
- 2023 - present: Chancellor’s Fellow, The University of Edinburgh
- 2020 - 2023: MRC Research Co-Investigator, University College London
- 2016 - 2020: Research Associate, University College London
- 2011 - 2016: PhD student, Boston University
Research
Episodic memory is our memory for what happened, where and when. To enable cognition, such as episodic memory, areas of the brain communicate via the firing of populations of interconnected neurons in a complex spatiotemporal profile, or ‘neural code’. Our research identifies the population level activity profiles and functional network connectivity within the hippocampus which support the formation, consolidation and retrieval of episodic memories.
The hippocampus is central to episodic memory, however, the precise neural codes which are fundamental to this ability remain to be fully established. This is due to our prior inability to manipulate brain activity in behaving animals at a cellular and millisecond resolution, driving physiologically realistic activity patterns and observing the effects on cognition.
In the Neural Coding for Episodic Memory Lab, we test theories about the neural activity underlying memory, focussing on the importance of finely timed neural activity sequences. In addition, we assess the network/computational properties of the distinct hippocampal subfields which support memory, looking at cell assembly and sequence formation as well as pattern completion and separation capability. We utilise the ‘all-optical’ combination of 2-photon calcium/voltage imaging and 2-photon targeted optogenetics, mini-scope calcium imaging, extracellular electrophysiology and behavioural tasks involving memory.
Our work allows the establishment of causal links between specific neural activity patterns and memory, we aim to move the field towards a unifying theory of hippocampal function and significantly advance the science of the neurobiology of memory.
