Ingrid Olson | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Education | |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Cognitive Neuroscience |
Institutions | Temple University |
Ingrid Olson is an American professor, who is the Thaddeus L. Bolton Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. [1] At Temple University, she serves as the Director of the Cognition and Neuroscience Area. She is an expert on the biological basis of human cognition, with special focus on memory and social cognition. [2] As of 2023, she has produced around 100 scientific publications, which have been cited around 14,000 times.
Ingrid Olson was born in Muskegon, Michigan. She attended Muskegon High School and did her undergraduate degree at University of Michigan. She got her PhD at Yale University and she conducted her postdoctoral research at the Yale School of Medicine.
Dr. Olson's graduate research was focused on visual statistical learning [3] and visual short term memory . [4] She published one of the first studies showing that the hippocampus plays an essential role in maintaining information over very brief delays, [5] going against dogma that this structure was only essential for long term memory. She has also done research on how our brain remembers people and other forms of social memory [6] and how this sort of memory can be improved by electrical stimulation of the anterior temporal lobes. [7] Newer work, in collaboration with Nora Newcombe, has focused on how the brain matures to support episodic memory in young children. [8] She has helped establish the fundamental role of neural white matter, such as the Fornix (neuroanatomy), Uncinate fasciculus, and Cerebellothalamic tract, in orchestrating complex cognitive processes such as episodic memory, person memory, and social cognition. [9] [10] [11] [12] Her research program is funded by grants from the National Institute of Health.
The limbic system, also known as the paleomammalian cortex, is a set of brain structures located on both sides of the thalamus, immediately beneath the medial temporal lobe of the cerebrum primarily in the forebrain.
The temporal lobe is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The temporal lobe is located beneath the lateral fissure on both cerebral hemispheres of the mammalian brain.
Brodmann area 10 is the anterior-most portion of the prefrontal cortex in the human brain. BA10 was originally defined broadly in terms of its cytoarchitectonic traits as they were observed in the brains of cadavers, but because modern functional imaging cannot precisely identify these boundaries, the terms anterior prefrontal cortex, rostral prefrontal cortex and frontopolar prefrontal cortex are used to refer to the area in the most anterior part of the frontal cortex that approximately covers BA10—simply to emphasize the fact that BA10 does not include all parts of the prefrontal cortex.
In neurology, anterograde amnesia is the inability to create new memories after an event that caused amnesia, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past, while long-term memories from before the event remain intact. This is in contrast to retrograde amnesia, where memories created prior to the event are lost while new memories can still be created. Both can occur together in the same patient. To a large degree, anterograde amnesia remains a mysterious ailment because the precise mechanism of storing memories is not yet well understood, although it is known that the regions of the brain involved are certain sites in the temporal cortex, especially in the hippocampus and nearby subcortical regions.
Semantic memory refers to general world knowledge that humans have accumulated throughout their lives. This general knowledge is intertwined in experience and dependent on culture. New concepts are learned by applying knowledge learned from things in the past.
Brodmann area 38, also BA38 or temporopolar area 38 (H), is part of the temporal cortex in the human brain. BA 38 is at the anterior end of the temporal lobe, known as the temporal pole.
The fornix is a C-shaped bundle of nerve fibers in the brain that acts as the major output tract of the hippocampus. The fornix also carries some afferent fibers to the hippocampus from structures in the diencephalon and basal forebrain. The fornix is part of the limbic system. While its exact function and importance in the physiology of the brain are still not entirely clear, it has been demonstrated in humans that surgical transection—the cutting of the fornix along its body—can cause memory loss. There is some debate over what type of memory is affected by this damage, but it has been found to most closely correlate with recall memory rather than recognition memory. This means that damage to the fornix can cause difficulty in recalling long-term information such as details of past events, but it has little effect on the ability to recognize objects or familiar situations.
Episodic memory is the memory of everyday events that can be explicitly stated or conjured. It is the collection of past personal experiences that occurred at particular times and places; for example, the party on one's 7th birthday. Along with semantic memory, it comprises the category of explicit memory, one of the two major divisions of long-term memory.
The angular gyrus is a region of the brain lying mainly in the posteroinferior region of the parietal lobe, occupying the posterior part of the inferior parietal lobule. It represents the Brodmann area 39.
In psycholinguistics, language processing refers to the way humans use words to communicate ideas and feelings, and how such communications are processed and understood. Language processing is considered to be a uniquely human ability that is not produced with the same grammatical understanding or systematicity in even human's closest primate relatives.
In neurology, semantic dementia (SD), also known as semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by loss of semantic memory in both the verbal and non-verbal domains. However, the most common presenting symptoms are in the verbal domain. Semantic dementia is a disorder of semantic memory that causes patients to lose the ability to match words or images to their meanings. However, it is fairly rare for patients with semantic dementia to develop category specific impairments, though there have been documented cases of it occurring. Typically, a more generalized semantic impairment results from dimmed semantic representations in the brain.
The superior parietal lobule is bounded in front by the upper part of the postcentral sulcus, but is usually connected with the postcentral gyrus above the end of the sulcus. The superior parietal lobule contains Brodmann's areas 5 and 7.
The uncinate fasciculus is a white matter association tract in the human brain that connects parts of the limbic system such as the temporal pole, anterior parahippocampus, and amygdala in the temporal lobe with inferior portions of the frontal lobe such as the orbitofrontal cortex. Its function is unknown though it is affected in several psychiatric conditions. It is one of the last white matter tracts to mature in the human brain.
The superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) is an association tract in the brain that is composed of three separate components. It is present in both hemispheres and can be found lateral to the centrum semiovale and connects the frontal, occipital, parietal, and temporal lobes. This bundle of tracts (fasciculus) passes from the frontal lobe through the operculum to the posterior end of the lateral sulcus where they either radiate to and synapse on neurons in the occipital lobe, or turn downward and forward around the putamen and then radiate to and synapse on neurons in anterior portions of the temporal lobe.
The inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) is traditionally considered one of the major occipitotemporal association tracts. It is the white matter backbone of the ventral visual stream. It connects the ventral surface of the anterior temporal lobe and the extrastriate cortex of the occipital lobe, running along the lateral and inferior wall of the lateral ventricle.
The posterior parietal cortex plays an important role in planned movements, spatial reasoning, and attention.
The retrosplenial cortex (RSC) is a cortical area in the brain comprising Brodmann areas 29 and 30. It is secondary association cortex, making connections with numerous other brain regions. The region's name refers to its anatomical location immediately behind the splenium of the corpus callosum in primates, although in rodents it is located more towards the brain surface and is relatively larger. Its function is currently not well understood, but its location close to visual areas and also to the hippocampal spatial/memory system suggest it may have a role in mediating between perceptual and memory functions, particularly in the spatial domain. However, its exact contribution to either space or memory processing has been hard to pin down.
The neuroanatomy of memory encompasses a wide variety of anatomical structures in the brain.
Recognition memory, a subcategory of explicit memory, is the ability to recognize previously encountered events, objects, or people. When the previously experienced event is reexperienced, this environmental content is matched to stored memory representations, eliciting matching signals. As first established by psychology experiments in the 1970s, recognition memory for pictures is quite remarkable: humans can remember thousands of images at high accuracy after seeing each only once and only for a few seconds.
Eleanor Anne Maguire is an Irish neuroscientist. Since 2007, she has been Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London where she is also a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow.
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