Oliva Gonzalez Lab
Principal Investigator: Azahara Oliva Gonzalez
Institution: Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)
Primary Subfield: Neuroscience
Recruitment Status: Inquire for rotation/fellowship opportunities
Research Focus
Project Summary/Abstract Mental health disorders associated with memory deficits have been on the rise for a few decades, highlighting the need for understanding the brain mechanisms of memory from a systems neuroscience point of view. One of the outstanding problems regarding the mechanisms of memory is how the brain can continuously incorporate new memories while leaving recently acquired knowledge intact. The current accepted model sets that recently acquired memories are reactivated in the hippocampus during sleep, an initial step for memory consolidation, during sharp-wave ripples (SWRs), hippocampal oscillations important for memory and planning. Yet, this process is concomitant with the hippocampal reactivation of prior memories, posing the problem of how to prevent interference between older and recent, initially labile, memory traces. Theoretical work has suggested that consolidating multiple memories while minimizing interference can be achieved by randomly interleaving their reactivation. Alternatively, a temporal micro-structure that promotes the reactivation of different types of memories during specific substates during the overall course of the sleep could exist. Ind…
Active NIH Awards
- 4R01MH140009-02: Neural dynamics underlying brain state-dependent memory functions (2026)
- 1R01MH140009-01: Neural dynamics underlying brain state-dependent memory functions (2025)
- 5R00MH122582-05: Hippocampal-subcortical interactions underlying social memory (2024)
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