Current Work

Right now I am in the lab of Dr. Matt Wilson in the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. We are studying the roll the hippocampus plays in consolidation of long term memories. Basically we ask questions about how the brain takes recent experiences and then stores them for later recall. I'm interested in the what are the possible ways to disrupt consolidation using different drugs.

Videos From my Lab

I was able to find a copy of the Nova episode entititled Why We Dream I uploaded a short clip which does a really good job showing the kind of work I do. Here is the link. Right click on the link and select "Save As". When the download is complete you should be able to watch the video.

As I said above Nova has done a few specials on my lab, I can't find a link to the entire show but below is a trailer for the recent show. Matt makes an appearance at the end of the trailer.

Past Work

As an undergraduate I worked in the lab of Dr. Scott Steffensen at BYU were I studied addiction. We were interested in the role of mid-brain GABA neurons in the encoding of reward value. It was interesting work because the main-stream theories suggest that Dopamine is the code for reward; however, some work we did in Scott's lab suggested that GABA (an inhibitory neurotransmitter) could also be used to code for a rewarding stimuli.

Posters Presented

SFN 2007 - Atlanta (2 posters)
BYU Ira Fulton conference (2 posters)
More Coming Soon