Memory has been typically studied in the laboratory using random lists of words stripped of the rich contextual structures that usually accompany our normal everyday experiences. Neisser (1976) argued that cognitive psychology had failed to address everyday human behavior due to its overreliance on artificial laboratory-based experiments. 

While it was not clear at that time how one would develop an ecologically valid memory science, today we are able to rigorously capture human experience using wearable devices and smartphones. We can also collect brain data as people undergo naturalistic movie-watching experiences. Using such a multi-pronged approach, we will provide critical real-world tests of theories of memory and event cognition that were developed in highly contrived laboratory studies. 

Please check out the publications page for a list of prior work on related topics (e.g., Sreekumar et al., 2014; Nielson et al., 2015; Sreekumar et al., 2018) and a more recent review article that represents our current research goals and plans (Pooja, Ghosh, & Sreekumar, 2024). 

The lab seeks students with strong quantitative and coding skills and an interest in human memory to work on projects in this area.

Inspired by Walter J Freeman's pioneering work in neurodynamics, we seek to understand how different propagating patterns of neural activity play a role in cognition. We use methods from the physics of wave propagation and apply stability analysis of nonlinear dynamical systems to characterize complex and plane propagating waves in the brain. Shared invasive brain recordings from humans and animals will be used in this endeavor as well as scalp EEG recordings in new experiments designed to test hypotheses about the functional role of propagating waves. In a major area of focus for the lab, we will develop neuronal models that span spatiotemporal scales so that we can investigate the mechanisms underlying coordination behavior in neural dynamics. 

See Sreekumar et al. (2021) on the publications page for a characterization of propagating plane waves of neural activity and their relationship with traveling waves at the micro-scale as well as single-unit spiking in the human brain.

We are also interested in other types of neural dynamics, such as an internally drifting temporal context (Howard & Kahana, 2002) and their role in memory and learning. See, for example, El-Kalliny et al. (2019) and Joshi et al. (2025) on the publications page. 

The lab seeks students with strong quantitative and coding skills and expertise/interest in the physics of complex systems to work on projects in this area.