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At the DyNaC lab, we investigate the dynamics of brain function over different timescales. An important feature of our research is that we use naturalistic stimuli, such as movies and auditory narratives that allow us to study brain function in contexts similar to our daily life experiences.
On the timescale of the lifespan we explore how the accumulation of knowledge over the lifepan allows older adults to keep functioning well in daily life.
On the timescale of our daily life experiences (seconds to minutes) we investigate how the brain segments and integrates information over time into meaningful events and neural states, where neural states are temporally stable patterns of neural activity. Across the cortical hierarchy, regions segment information at different temporal scales. We investigate the properties of this segmentation mechanism; how it relates to our experience of temporal events, how it is shaped by attention and drives memory encoding and how it relates to the information that is represented in specific brain regions.
To study these questions we use and develop cutting-edge techniques for measuring brain function, such as data-driven methods for neural state segmentation and more robust functional connectivity metrics. Our group is committed to creating a safe, open and inclusive research environment with a healthy balance between life and work.
Common themes
Common themes
Event segmentation and neural states
How does our brain enable us to perceive and remember the complex real-world experiences that we have every day? How do we segment our experience into discrete events that we can understand and remember? At which timescales do different brain regions organize our experiences? To be able to answer these questions, we have developed new analysis methods that can identify transitions between neural activity patterns in fMRI or M/EEG data (neural state boundaries). Neural state boundaries are associated with the perceptions of event boundaries that we experience subjectively. In this research, we use naturalistic stimuli like movies that are more similar to our real life experiences than the stimuli that are traditionally used in cognitive neuroscience.
Knowledge and experience benefit the aging brain
In society and in science, aging is often seen as a process of decline. However, if we look more deeply, we see that this is not the whole story. Many of most challenging jobs in society are performed by older adults. To understand this disrepancy, we need to consider the knowledge and experience that older adults acquire over their lifetime. Most research places older adults in artificial environments where they cannot rely on this prior knowledge. In our research we study older and younger adults in naturalistic settings, which allows them to make optimal use of their prior experiences as they are processing new information. We specifically investigate whether older adults rely more on predictive processing than younger adults and whether this allows them to maintain high levels of cognitive functioning.
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