Interests:
Hippocampus, Single Neurons, (Spatial) Memory, Naturalistic Neuroscience, Deep Brain Stimulation
Biography:
Currently, I am a postdoctoral researcher working with Prof Joshua Jacobs at Columbia University.
I am working on a novel virtual navigation task to investigate spatial memory encoding on the level of single neurons in the human hippocampus. This project also includes direct theta brain stimulation.
Preliminary results suggest that spatial position in the hippocampus is coded by a large distributed number of neurons instead of highly selective place coding cells. Furthermore, we found initial evidence of weakly tuned neurons that do not alter their firing rates based on proximity to a place field, but instead consistently fire during specific periods of excitation in the LFP.
In addition, I am involved in a multidisciplinary project titled "CAMERA" (Context-Aware Multimodal Ecological Research and Assessment), which aims to develop a platform for measuring brain-behavior interactions in unstructured, naturalistic environments. This project is a collaborative effort involving the Ortiz Lab and the Neurological Institute of New York under Brett Youngerman. The CAMERA platform integrates continuous, passive multimodal sensor data with intermittent active assessments to predict anxiety-memory states in patients undergoing inpatient monitoring with intracranial electrodes for clinical epilepsy.
During my PhD, with Prof Simon Hanslmayr we discovered that hippocampal neurons in humans encode individual episodic memories. These neurons use either a rate code or a temporal firing code to represent discrete episodic memories. Importantly, they capture the conjunction of various elements that make up an episode rather than individual elements or concepts within it.