Research

How does the brain prioritize what to remember? 

Memories define who we are and are critical to our survival. We must be able to learn from our past experiences and recall important details like where food is. However, not all experiences are remembered equally well. The strength of a memory often depends on the cognitive, physiological, or emotional state of the individual during the experience. For example, were you actively searching for food (cognitive demand)? Were you hungry (physiological demand)? Were you really excited to get your favorite dessert at the restaurant (positive emotion)? Anecdotally, we know that these factors influence how vividly we can recall a given experience. It is not well understood, however, how these demands alter the neural substrates of memory storage and retrieval to support—or not support—our needs.

One of the most profound physiological demands in mammalian life is pregnancy and the postpartum period (together, the "peripartum period"). Up to 80% of pregnant people experience significant changes in memory and cognitive function, as well as an elevated risk of depression. These changes include deficits in memory function in late pregnancy, which can negatively affect quality of life for the mother and care for the offspring in the short term. On the other hand, motherhood yields positive impacts on maternal cognitive flexibility and brain health in the longer term. Behavioral changes during pregnancy are accompanied by extensive morphological changes in the brains of both humans and rodents, pointing to remarkable neural plasticity. However, the neural activity dynamics that underlie peripartum memory changes at the level of single neurons, circuits, and brain-body systems remain unknown.

Our goal is to understand how neural circuits flexibly shape the information stored in memory according to the demands on the individual, including the profound demand of pregnancy and motherhood.