Brain Inspired

BI 156 Mariam Aly: Memory, Attention, and Perception


Listen Later

Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community.

Check out my free video series about what's missing in AI and Neuroscience

Mariam Aly runs the Aly lab at Columbia University, where she studies the interaction of memory, attention, and perception in brain regions like the hippocampus. The short story is that memory affects our perceptions, attention affects our memories, memories affect our attention, and these effects have signatures in neural activity measurements in our hippocampus and other brain areas. We discuss her experiments testing the nature of those interactions. We also discuss a particularly difficult stretch in Mariam's graduate school years, and how she now prioritizes her mental health.

  • Aly Lab.
  • Twitter: @mariam_s_aly.
  • Related papers
    • Attention promotes episodic encoding by stabilizing hippocampal representations.
    • The medial temporal lobe is critical for spatial relational perception.
    • Cholinergic modulation of hippocampally mediated attention and perception.
    • Preparation for upcoming attentional states in the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex.
    • How hippocampal memory shapes, and is shaped by, attention.
    • Attentional fluctuations and the temporal organization of memory.
    • 0:00 - Intro

      3:50 - Mariam's background
      9:32 - Hippocampus history and current science
      12:34 - hippocampus and perception
      13:42 - Relational information
      18:30 - How much memory is explicit?
      22:32 - How attention affects hippocampus
      32:40 - fMRI levels vs. stability
      39:04 - How is hippocampus necessary for attention
      57:00 - How much does attention affect memory?
      1:02:24 - How memory affects attention
      1:06:50 - Attention and memory relation big picture
      1:07:42 - Current state of memory and attention
      1:12:12 - Modularity
      1:17:52 - Practical advice to improve attention/memory
      1:21:22 - Mariam's challenges

      ...more
      View all episodesView all episodes
      Download on the App Store

      Brain InspiredBy Paul Middlebrooks

      • 4.8
      • 4.8
      • 4.8
      • 4.8
      • 4.8

      4.8

      134 ratings


      More shows like Brain Inspired

      View all
      Very Bad Wizards by Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro

      Very Bad Wizards

      2,680 Listeners

      Making Sense with Sam Harris by Sam Harris

      Making Sense with Sam Harris

      26,380 Listeners

      Conversations with Tyler by Mercatus Center at George Mason University

      Conversations with Tyler

      2,461 Listeners

      The Quanta Podcast by Quanta Magazine

      The Quanta Podcast

      544 Listeners

      Closer To Truth by Closer To Truth

      Closer To Truth

      246 Listeners

      The Michael Shermer Show by Michael Shermer

      The Michael Shermer Show

      941 Listeners

      Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas by Sean Carroll

      Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

      4,167 Listeners

      The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss by Lawrence M. Krauss

      The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss

      506 Listeners

      Google DeepMind: The Podcast by Hannah Fry

      Google DeepMind: The Podcast

      203 Listeners

      Last Week in AI by Skynet Today

      Last Week in AI

      313 Listeners

      Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST) by Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

      Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

      101 Listeners

      Dwarkesh Podcast by Dwarkesh Patel

      Dwarkesh Podcast

      551 Listeners

      Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal by Theories of Everything

      Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal

      18 Listeners

      Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg by Spencer Greenberg

      Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg

      137 Listeners

      Robinson's Podcast by Robinson Erhardt

      Robinson's Podcast

      270 Listeners