TORONTO, March 10, 2010 -- York University psychology professor Shayna Rosenbaum has been awarded a 2010 Sloan Research Fellowship to further her research into episodic memory and how neural damage affects it.

“The award provides me and my students with the flexibility to continue a line of research that might be considered to fall slightly beyond the boundaries of traditional memory research,” says Rosenbaum, an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Neuroscience Graduate Diploma Program, part of York’s Faculty of Health.

Rosenbaum’s research into episodic memory – the ability to re-experience the details of personal life events – takes an innovative approach, combining neuroimaging methods like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), with neuropsychological testing of patients who have damage to the medial temporal lobes and prefrontal cortex. In this manner, she is able to investigate how memory for personal experiences and the experiences of others are organized in the brain, how such representations break down following neurological disease, and how other aspects of cognition are affected by their loss.

Such research has implications for other aspects of cognition not normally considered to be part of memory, such as future planning, decision-making and inferring other people’s mental experiences, which Rosenbaum and her students hope to investigate.

“The Sloan Research Fellowship is meaningful in that an international body of scientists, both within and outside the field of neuroscience, has recognized that research aiming to better understand memory and how it is organized in the brain might be both clinically and theoretically important,” she says.

Her work is supported by the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Research & Innovation and a New Investigator Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Rosenbaum is also an associate scientist at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest.

Since the award’s inception in 1955, 38 Sloan Research Fellows have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in their fields. Grants of $50,000 for a two-year period are administered by each Fellow’s institution. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic, not-for-profit institution that supports original research and broad-based education in neuroscience, technology, engineering, mathematics and economic performance.

For more information, visit the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation website or York's Cognitive Neuroscience Lab website.

York University is the leading interdisciplinary research and teaching university in Canada. York offers a modern, academic experience at the undergraduate and graduate level in Toronto, Canada’s most international city. The third largest university in the country, York is host to a dynamic academic community of 50,000 students and 7,000 faculty and staff, as well as 200,000 alumni worldwide. York’s 10 Faculties and 28 research centres conduct ambitious, groundbreaking research that is interdisciplinary, cutting across traditional academic boundaries. This distinctive and collaborative approach is preparing students for the future and bringing fresh insights and solutions to real-world challenges. York University is an autonomous, not-for-profit corporation.

 

-30-

Media Contact:

Melissa Hughes, Media Relations, York University, 416 736 2100 x 22097, mehughes@yorku.ca