Why don’t we remember being an infant? Infants learn an incredible amount of information — the faces of loved ones, how to control their movement, the names of objects — and can even retain information over brief intervals; yet their limited long-term retention remains a puzzle.
My research examines this mystery by elucidating the mechanisms for learning and memory in the developing mind and brain. In this talk, I will describe an fMRI experiment with awake infants that tests how they learn statistical regularities and I will situate this result in the context of memory development. Additionally, I will describe ongoing work examining how infants encode memories, how they learn about navigation trajectories, and how they develop representations for faces. Throughout I will show how studying the youngest minds can shed insight on mechanisms driving memory across the lifespan.

About the Speaker
Dr. Ellis received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2021. Before that, he received a Masters from Princeton University (2017) and a Bachelor of Science from Auckland University,
New Zealand (2013). He was awarded the FLUX Dissertation Prize (2021) and the James Grossman Dissertation Prize (2021), as well as the William Kessen Teaching Award (2019).

This talk is hosted by SFB1315 subproject B04 Johannes Mohn, and will be introduced and moderated by SFB1315 Speaker Matthew Larkum (A04, A10, Z).

Certificate of attendance: Please contact team assistant serenella.brinati.1@hu-berlin.de

Lecture Poster

Series Overview