Jonides Lab Research

about the lab

Welcome to the University of Michigan's Cognitive Neuroimaging Lab.

Working memory is an integral part of our everyday lives, so much that most of the time we are not even aware it is at work. Our aim in the Jonides Lab is to better understand the mechanisms and underlying processes that contribute to working memory and to executive processes that operate on the contents of working memory. The majority of our work is concerned with the storage of information in working memory, as well as with executive functions of working memory. Our tasks are intended to study the processes by which participants allocate attention selectively to information in their environment as well as those used to switch attention from one piece of information to another, or inhibit attention to irrelevant information. Also, our lab is interested in individual differences in working memory and how these predict cognitive performance, especially concentrating in how training working memory and executive processing may change performance in cognitive tasks. For example, we have a program of research concerned with training in working memory and its effect on fluid intelligence.

Our lab is also deeply interested in processes of interference-resolution. The concept of "interference" has played a central role in theories of perception and memory. For over 100 years, psychological experimentation and theory have been focused on understanding how interference is resolved in perceptual, memory, and motor processes. In current parlance, the resolution of interference requires the engagement of executive processes to control the trajectory of cognition. We research interference-resolution with the main goal of creating psychological and neural models of these mechanisms, and further applying this basic research to study Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Understanding cognitive deficits in MDD via understanding processes of interference resolution may help us to understand ruminative processes among depressed individuals.

Studying individuals diagnosed with MDD provides an important model for testing our assumptions about the neurological and cognitive environment associated with these processes. This is because the cortical areas that are active during interference-resolution are precisely those that have been implicated in MDD. Further, understanding the cognitive processes that are dysfunctional in depressives will help to continue the refinement of cognitive models of depression, leading to more efficacious therapy for such individuals. Our tasks are tested behaviorally in the lab, as well as while participants are in the fMRI scanner. Functional magnetic resonance imaging of these tasks allows us to delve deeper into the neurological mechanisms behind brain functions during task completion.