Jason R Taylor, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar
Department of Neurology
University of California, Davis
email: jason.taylor < at > alumni.brown.edu
Jason's doctoral research in the Memory Lab explored the role of perceptual features in knowledge representation using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Certain aspects of ERPs elicited by words, such as their latency and topographical distribution, can be used dissociate automatic and controlled activation of these features. Results suggest that the perceptual features of a word's referent are activated automatically when that word is read. These studies are presently being extended to the exploration of semantic deficits caused by the neuropathology of Alzheimer's disease.
Jason is now a postdoc in John Olichney's lab in the Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis (recently moved from LOCI at UC San Diego). His current research uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and ERPs to study semantic and episodic memory in older adults and in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or Alzheimer's disease. In January 2007 Jason will be joining the Memory & Knowledge Research Group at the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England. There he will continue his research on memory in aging using fMRI, ERPs, and magnetoencephalography (MEG) with Rik Henson.