​Cait has a new preprint available co-authored by her post-doc advisor Dasa Zeithamova and an undergraduate research assistant in the bamlab, Takako Iwashita. In it, they show that categories can be represented both by individual exemplars and abstract prototypes within the same task. Both representations can form in parallel across distinct regions of the brain, with inferior prefrontal and lateral parietal regions representing exemplars, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex and anterior hippocampus representing prototypes.

Preprint is available for download here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.26.117507v2

Cait and Dasa have a new paper published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition! In it, they show that training on coherent sets of category examples facilitates later generalization, even to items at the category boundary. They also show greater reliance on abstract category representations following coherent category training.

The paper is available in journal format at https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2020-13876-001.html or in manuscript format at https://psyarxiv.com/7g2q5/

Cait is in Chicago for the Society for Neuroscience's Annual Meeting. You can see her work presented as part of Dasa Zeithamova's talk Saturday afternoon in the Brain Mechanisms of Concept Learning minisymposium. She will also present the below poster Tuesday afternoon - come see her at poster BB34!

Cait participated in the SPICE open house with her fellow Bamlabbers. The event brings together scientists from the university to do hands on demonstrations with children and their families. The Bamlab did some memory demonstrations as well as showing kids a REAL HUMAN BRAIN. Look here for more information on SPICE: https://spicescience.uoregon.edu/

Field trip! Brain and Memory Labbers Cait, Stefania, and Takako made a trip up to Portland to see summer intern, Oliver, present his work at the Apprenticeships in Science and Engineering (ASE) conference. Great work Oliver! They made some time to hike and eat some tacos and xiao long bao while they were in the neighborhood. Science + Nature + Food = !!!

For reasons that would take a minute to explain, goats have been the unofficial mascot of the Brain and Memory Lab for quite some time. Cait and fellow Brain and Memory labbers, Stefania and Lea, recently took a trip to Urban Legends Farm to spend quality time with some little (LITERAL) kids!

Cait will present a poster 'Model-based MRI reveals abstract concept representations in medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus' at the 2019 meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping in Rome. Find the poster reprint below and come see her on Tuesday, June 11!