Welcome! I’m Lauren, a cognitive neuroscientist fascinated by how humans perceive, learn, and remember.

I’m currently a Ph.D. student funded by NSERC and work in the Memory and Perception Lab at the University of Toronto, under the supervision of Dr. Morgan Barense.

My Research Program

Although they often feel relatively stable, our memories are remarkably dynamic. The experiences we encode continually shift—reshaped by time, by new experiences, and by how we revisit them. Understanding these dynamics is fundamental not only for understanding how we construct and update our personal past, but also for how memory supports adaptive decision-making and future behavior.

My primary research program investigates why and how memories change, treating memory as a dynamic, multidimensional system in which representations are continually transformed and flexibly expressed, both on their own and in relation to one another. I study how different mnemonic features strengthen, fade, or reorganize over time, the conditions under which these changes occur, and the neural computations that support them. To do this, I use rich, naturalistic behavioral paradigms paired with neuroimaging and computational tools to uncover the mechanisms that drive these transformations.

My secondary line of work focuses on developing novel neuroimaging methods to investigate how neural timescales in the brain adapt to support perception, memory, and cognition. I aim to uncover how neural dynamics integrate information across moments and enable flexible memory expression over multiple timescales.

More About Me

I earned my Honours Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Waterloo, where my research spanned memory and attention. My first stream of research explored how task context and naturalistic environmental factors shape the flexible allocation of attention in everyday situations. My second stream of research investigated how different types of information are represented, organized, and retrieved in memory, revealing fundamental principles of how symbolic and linguistic information is processed and remembered.

When I’m not in the lab, I enjoy spending time with my cat Ladybug, playing violin and piano, biking around Toronto, camping and exploring the outdoors, and honing my barista skills with my home espresso setup.