Emily Weichart

Biography

Memory is at the core of everything we do as humans. Every habit, preference, and personality trait that make us who we are have been shaped by our previous experiences. As the director of the Quantified Cognition Lab at USU, my research is dedicated to understanding how we represent the contents of our experiences in memory, and importantly, how to quantify those representations. To do this, my lab collects eye-tracking, behavioral, and electrophysiological data as participants learn novel concepts. By collecting multiple streams of data, we gain precise insight into 1) the sources of information that participants pay attention to as they learn; 2) how people use the information that they learn to make decisions; and 3) how the brain adjusts its representations when the learning environment suddenly changes. Through quantifying the building blocks of experience, we can begin to understand the mechanisms through which they change over time, and importantly, how things can go wrong. This work therefore offers a world of new opportunities for investigating the effects of age, illness, and associated treatment on cognition via precise measurements, rather than subjective reports or descriptive symptom profiles.