Please join us for a special ICS Colloquium in Clare Small, Room 207!

Title: From perception to memory: The integration and influence of knowledge in the human brain

Presenter: Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh

Website

Abstract: Memory and perception are inherently intertwined. In order to later recall a name or recognize an object from its combination of features, we must integrate visual, language, and other information, with our existing knowledge (semantic memory). In this talk, I will present my research examining how this happens – specifically, the ways that memory interacts with perception, and influences new learning. First, I will discuss neuroimaging findings on how the brain represents knowledge that is directly relevant to perception, through the lens of real-world (canonical) size. Analysis methods that combine multivariate information with connectivity identify a supramodal semantic hub that may share size information with early visual cortex. I will go on to examine how our memory systems are affected by perceptual variation across exemplars, and make use of convolutional neural networks to determine how levels of the visual hierarchy influence memory encoding. Finally, I ask how memory encoding is affected when learned words and concepts are embedded in related knowledge, prior expertise, and rich naturalistic episodes. Such contexts appear to affect the character of the consolidated material in interesting ways, and, perhaps surprisingly, lead to common (inter-subject) patterns of neural activity. Together, this set of findings reveals the many ways that memory and perception interact as we understand and remember the world around us.

Bio: Marc N. Coutanche (he/him) is an Associate Professor ​in Psychology, a Research Scientist in the Learning Research & Development Center​, and Member of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC). He completed his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, post-doctoral training at Yale University, and received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Oxford. He is the current Chair of the Cognitive Program.