Alison Preston
- Professor
- Vice Provost for Faculty Development
- Dr. A. Wilson Nolle and Sir Raghunath P. Mahendroo Professorship in Neuroscience
- Neuroscience
Contact Information
Research
Our memories are the essence of who we are. The skills we have acquired, the knowledge we have amassed, and the personal experiences we have had define us as individuals. The overarching goal of work in the Preston Lab is to understand and manipulate the neural mechanisms that support learning and memory in the human brain. Our research focuses primarily on how interactions between the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex promote formation of new knowledge. In addition to exploring how hippocampal—prefrontal networks function in adulthood, we are interested in how development of these structures through childhood and adolescence supports not only gains in memory, but also underlies improvements in problem solving, creativity, reasoning, and planning abilities during development. To address the core questions of our research program, the lab employs a number of techniques on the leading edge of human neuroscience, including high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), neurostimulation, intracranial recordings in human patients, and computational modeling. These techniques provide unprecedented leverage to determine not only where particular cognitive processes are instantiated in the brain, but also the precise nature of the representations and computations that give rise to them.
Research Areas
- Neuroscience
- Human Development
- Learning and Memory
Fields of Interest
- Computational
- Behavior
- Human brain imaging
- Cognition/Sensory Systems
- Learning/Memory/Plasticity
- Computational/Theoretical
Centers and Institutes
- Center for Learning and Memory
- Center for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience
- Institute for Neuroscience
Publications
Representative publications
Coughlin, C., Pudhiyidath, A., Roome, H.E., Varga, N.L., Nguyen, K.V., & Preston, A.R. (2024). Asynchronous development of memory integration and differentiation influence temporal memory organization. Developmental Science, 27(2): e13437.
Sherrill, K.R., Molitor, R.J., Karagoz, A.B., Atyam, M., Mack, M.L., & Preston, A.R. (2023). Generalization of cognitive maps across space and time. Cerebral Cortex, 33(12), 7971-7992.
Schlichting, M.L., Guarino, K.F., Roome, H.E., & Preston, A.R. (2022). Memory reactivation modulates new encoding and impacts inference in the developing human brain. Nature Human Behaviour, 6(3), 415-428.
Molitor, R.J., Sherrill, K.R., Morton NW, Miller, A.A., & Preston, A.R. (2021). Memory reactivation during learning simultaneously promotes dentate gyrus/CA2,3 pattern differentiation and CA1 memory integration. Journal of Neuroscience, 41(4), 726–738.
Mack, M.L., Preston, A.R., & Love, B.C. (2020). Ventromedial prefrontal cortex compression during concept learning. Nature Communications, 11, 46.
Morton, NW, Schlichting, M.L., & Preston, A.R. (2020). Representations of common event structure in medial temporal lobe and frontoparietal cortex support efficient inference. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 117(47), 29338–29345.
Zeithamova, D., Gelman, B.D., Frank, L., & Preston, A.R. (2018). Abstract representation of prospective reward in the hippocampus. Journal of Neuroscience, 38(47), 10093-10101.
Schlichting, M.L., Guarino, K.F., Schapiro, A.C., Turk-Browne, N.B., & Preston, A.R. (2017). Hippocampal structure predicts statistical learning and associative inference abilities during development. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29(1): 37-51.
Zeithamova, D., & Preston, A.R. (2017). Temporal proximity promotes integration of overlapping events. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29(8), 1311-1323.
Mack, M.L., Love, B.C., & Preston, A.R. (2016). Dynamic updating of hippocampal conceptual representations through interactions with prefrontal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 113(46), 13203-13208.
Schlichting, M.L., Mumford, J.A., & Preston, A.R. (2015). Learning-related representational changes reveal dissociable integration and separation signatures in hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. Nature Communications, 6, 8151.
Schlichting, M.L., & Preston, A.R. (2015). Memory integration: Neural mechanisms and implications for behavior. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 1, 1-8.
Preston, A.R., & Eichenbaum, H. (2013). Interplay of the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex in memory. Current Biology, 23(17), R764-R773.
Zeithamova, D., Dominick, A.L., & Preston, A.R. (2012). Hippocampal and ventral medial prefrontal activation during retrieval-mediated learning supports novel inference. Neuron, 75(1), 168-179.