Your memory maker

“Although we know a lot about how the brain remembers real-world memories, understanding how the brain initially forms real-world memories has been elusive,” says Peggy St. Jacques, a psychology researcher in the Faculty of Science who also holds the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory and is a member of the Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute at the U of A. Her work is making memory less elusive.

Participants in St. Jacques’s Memory for Events Lab can don virtual reality headsets while within an MRI scanner so that when the scan is being taken, they’re experiencing an immersive, 360-degree 3D video of the event. A thorough understanding of how memories are formed and how the brain supports them is critical to understanding and one day treating disorders that affect our memories, such conditions as Alzheimer’s disease and PTSD. St. Jacques has been named one of 118 exceptional early-career Sloan Research Fellows. The Sloan Research Fellowships are two-year, $75,000 awards given out each year by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to researchers considered to be the next generation of leaders in their fields. Fifty-one previous fellows have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.