Michael Kahana
I am interested in human episodic memory for verbal, visual and spatial information. To study this general problem, I conduct experiments that measure behavioral and electrophysiological responses during memory tasks, and develop computational models to explain the resulting data. Our lab is one of several in the world studying the electrophysiological responses of neurons through direct intracranial electroencephalographic (iEEG) recording from the living human brain. Such recordings can be obtained from epilepsy patients who have had electrodes surgically implanted on the cortical surface of the brain or through the medial temporal lobes (including hippocampus) as part of the clinical process of localizing seizure foci. By analyzing how brain activity, including the responses of individual neurons, correlates with task variables, we are able to study the neurophysiological basis of memory with a high degree of spatial and temporal resolution. Current projects include studies of spatial navigation using a virtual taxi driver game, and computational modeling of the role of temporal context in visual and verbal memory.
Psychology Graduate Group; Neuroscience Graduate Group; Bioengineering Graduate Group
- Karl Healey [Post-doc]
- Lynn Lohnas [Neuroscience Graduate Student]
- Nicole Long [Psychology Graduate Student]
- Jeremy Manning [Neuroscience Graduate Student]
Kahana (2012). Foundations of Human Memory. Oxford University Press.
Morton, N. W., Kahana, M. J., Rosenberg, E. A., Sperling, M. R., Sharan, A. D., and Polyn, S. M. (2012). Category-specific neural oscillations pre- dict recall organization during memory search. Cerebral Cortex, in press.
Miller, J. F., Lazarus, E., Polyn, S. M., and Kahana, M. J. (2012). Spatial clustering during memory search. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, in press.
van Vugt, M. K., Sekuler, R., Wilson, H. R., and Kahana, M. J. (2012). Electrophysiological correlates of similarity-based interference in visual working memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, in press.
Manning, J. R., Sperling, M. R., Sharan, A., Rosenberg, E. A., and Ka- hana, M. J. (2012). Spontaneously reactivated patterns in frontal and temporal lobe predict semantic clustering during memory search. Journal of Neuroscience, in press.
Zaghloul, K., Weidemann, C. T., Lega, B.C., Jaggi, J., Baltuch, G.H., and Kahana, M. J. Neuronal activity in the human subthalamic nucleus encodes decision conflict during action selection.Journal of Neuroscience, 32, 2453-2460.
Lega, B. C., Jacobs, J. and Kahana. M. J. (2012). Human hippocampal theta oscillations and the formation of episodic memories. Hippocampus, 22, 748-761.
Solway, A., Murdock, B.B., and Kahana, M.J. (2012). Positional and temporal clustering in serial order memory. Memory & Cognition, 40(2), 177-190.
Manning, J. R., Polyn, S. M., Baltuch, G., Litt, B., and Kahana, M. J. (2011). Oscillatory patterns in temporal lobe reveal context reinstatement during memory search. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 108(31), 12893-12897.
Lohnas, L. J., Polyn, S. M., and Kahana, M. J. (2011). Contextual variability in free recall. Journal of Memory and Language, 64(3), 249-255.
Polyn, S. M., Erlikhman, G., and Kahana, M. J. (2011). Semantic cuing and the scale-insensitivity of recency and contiguity. Journal of Experi- mental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 37, 766-775.
Jacobs, J., Kahana, M. J., Ekstrom, A. D., Mollison, M. V., and Fried, I. (2010). A sense of direction in human entorhinal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 6487-6492.