Genevieve Albouy
University of Utah, UT·Neuroscience
Learning to type, play piano or ride a bike depends on motor memory, the memory for skills and movement sequences. Classic memory models held that the hippocampus, a deep brain region essential for remembering facts and events, plays no role in motor learning.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
- Topics
hippocampus
motor memory
procedural memory
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Test whether temporal interference stimulation (TIS), a non-invasive way to stimulate deep brain regions, applied to the hippocampus enhances offline motor sequence learning in young healthy adults, compared with sham stimulation.
- Measure with functional MRI how hippocampal TIS changes hippocampal responses and their offline reactivation during motor learning, testing whether the hippocampus stores abstract spatial and timing sequence information.
- Map with MRI the hippocampal responses that support motor and object sequence learning, and test whether strengthening these responses across domains improves memory consolidation.
- Reactivate memories during specific sleep periods while recording EEG brain waves, to test whether motor and object sequences learned together consolidate together.
More about the research
Yet brain scans keep showing it switched on while people learn movement sequences. The two projects ask what the hippocampus actually does for sequence memories, and whether memories of different kinds can be strengthened by linking them.
Why it matters
Understanding how the hippocampus supports skill memory could update how scientists think memory systems are organized. If TIS can safely change deep brain activity during learning, it could eventually be used to reduce motor learning problems in specific clinical populations. Methods for strengthening memory during sleep could lead to new ways of improving long-term memory, and the principles found may inform artificial intelligence models.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Erin Wamsley
Furman University, SC·Neuroscience
Test whether memories are reactivated and strengthened during seconds-long periods of waking rest, as they are during sleep, using EEG combined with measures of pupil size, reported thoughts and behavior.
LIla Davachi
Columbia University, NY·Neuroscience
Test whether ending a STEM lecture with a visuospatial rather than a verbal summary enhances offline neural replay, the brain's reactivation of recent learning during rest, measured with fMRI right after learning.
Ying-Hui Chou
University of Arizona, AZ·Neuroscience
Determine whether excitatory or inhibitory rTMS, magnetic pulses delivered through the scalp and aimed at the hippocampus, improves memory more than sham stimulation, in a randomized crossover trial of 60 adults with amnestic mild cognitive impairment.
The school
University of Utah: 58 labs on PI Pages, $789M a year on research, 366 research doctorates a year.
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