• Find people
• Intranet

Neural Mechanisms of Perception and Memory Rodrigo Quian Quiroga

Did you ever wonder how you could vividly remember a specific event from your past? Did you ever thought how ensembles of neurons in your brain have been involved in forming this memory, in consolidating it with time, and in evoking it years later? 

The overall goal of our research is to study how the brain encodes and processes information to give rise to our thoughts, perceptions, memories, feelings and even the awareness of ourselves. For this, we mainly study data from epileptic patients, implanted with intracranial recordings for clinical reasons. These electrodes typically cover the hippocampal formation - and area known to be critical for such memories - and allow us to simultaneously record dozens of individual neurons, as well as local 
field potentials and intracranial EEG activity, while the patients perform different tasks.  

Our group focuses on the neuronal mechanisms underlying perception, memory and cognitive processes, in general, pursuing an interdisciplinary research program based broadly around the following research lines: 

• The study of the neuronal mechanisms underlying perception and memory formation, consolidation and recall, by performing experiments with epileptic patients implanted with intracranial electrodes. 
• The development of advanced data processing methods to extract the maximum of information from high volumes of complex data.  
• The use Eye-tracker and EEG technologies to study perceptual and memory processes in real life situations. 
• The evaluation of potential clinical applications that could potentially help patients with related pathologies, such as epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease.