TAMEST 2019: Sheena Josselyn on Making, Breaking and Linking Memories

Sheena Josselyn, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist, The Hospital for Sick Children
Dr. Josselyn provides an overview of recent research focusing on how a memory is physically or functionally represented in the brain (the memory trace or “engram”). An engram is thought to be sparsely distributed over a distributed memory network. Dr. Josselyn describes the studies from her lab investigating how engrams supporting both fearful and rewarding memories are formed, stored and changed with time or further experience.
Memory impairments are a hallmark of aging, major mental illnesses (e.g. schizophrenia and depression) as well as neurological disorders (e.g. Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases). Therefore, understanding how the brain encodes and stores information is highly relevant to both mental health and mental illness.