Home Department: undeclared
Mentor: Anthony Wagner (Psychology)

“The Effect of “Meaning” and “Salience” on Memory Precision”

Kristine aims to unravel how repetitive learning of a target location within a room shifts visual attention from “salience” to “meaning”. Her project will leverage participants’ fixations to determine how individuals visually engage with an indoor room, generating “meaning-” and “salience-maps” of each room. By studying how different mechanisms of attention such as “meaning” and “salience” drive learning for a location in a room, the team can isolate how learning is expressed via eye movements and relate these outcomes to memory. These assays test certain aspects of brain function and could potentially be used as early indicator assays to diagnose neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease.