Dr. Anderson focuses on fundamental mechanisms of memory, attention, and cognitive control, and their interaction. A central observation is that memory, like other aspects of cognition and behaviour, poses problems of control. Dr. Anderson uses behavioural, haemodynamic (fMRI) and electrophysiological (EEG) neuroimaging to investigate the cognitive and neural mechanisms by which people suppress distracting and unwanted memories. A key focus is on the hypothesis that memory control engages mechanisms involved in suppressing prepotent responses, to down-regulate activity in neural structures that represent past experience, disrupting memory. The project is thus concerned with the role of frontally-mediated inhibitory control mechanisms in both incidental and motivated forgetting. These theoretical issues have direct translational relevance. The program studies healthy volunteers, young and older, and patients with disordered control over memory, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
