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Randy Buckner, Ph.D.

Professor of Psychology

Harvard University
William James Hall, 2nd Floor
Cambridge, MA 02138
Email: rbuckner@wjh.harvard.edu
Predocs: 4 Postdocs: 1 Completed PhD's: 4

Randy Buckner Ph.D.

Our research explores how brain systems support memory function in humans. Two ideas run through this work. First, acts of memory are hypothesized to depend on a collection of cobbled-together processes that aid memory decisions. Memory is proposed to be a constructive process that depends on strategic, controlled processes intermixed with more automatic processes to build a perception that is experienced as an incident from the past. Guided by this idea, we characterize brain networks that support distinct components of memory and ask how they contribute to learning and remembering. These studies combine behavioral and functional measures. Second, multiple, dissociated factors are hypothesized to affect brain systems in older adults that combine in their influences on memory abilities. This second hypothesis has led us to use molecular, structural, and functional imaging methods to characterize distinct age-dependent cascades that influence memory function. These explorations require the use of existing behavioral and functional neuroimaging techniques as well as development of new methods such as event-related functional MRI to measure momentary changes in brain activity. We are beginning explorations of individual differences in memory function as well as characterization of cognitive and memory development in children.

 

References:

  • Wheeler, M.E., Petersen, S.E., and Buckner, R.L. (2000) Memory’s echo: Vivid remembering reactivates sensory-specific cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 97: 11125-11129.
  • Logan, J.M., Sanders, A.L., Snyder, A.Z., Morris, J.C., and Buckner, R.L. (2002) Under-Recruitment and nonselective recruitment: Dissociable neural mechanisms associated with aging. Neuron, 33: 827-840.
  • Wheeler, M.E., and Buckner, R.L. (2003) Functional dissociation among components of remembering: Control, perceived oldness, and content. Journal of Neuroscience, 23: 3869-3880.
  • Shannon, B.J., and Buckner, R.L. (2004) Functional-anatomic correlates of memory retrieval that suggest nontraditional processing roles for multiple distinct regions within posterior parietal cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 24: 10084-10092.
  • Buckner, R.L., Snyder, A.Z., Shannon, B.J., LaRossa, G., Sachs, R., Fotenos, A.F., Sheline, Y.I., Klunk, W.E., Mathis, C.A., Morris, J.C., and Mintun, M.A. (2005) Molecular, structural, and functional characterization of Alzheimer’s disease: Evidence for a relationship between default activity, amyloid, and memory. Journal of Neuroscience, 25: 7709-7717.