Associate Professor, Psychology
Northwestern University
Head of the Brain, Behavior and Cognition Program at NU Psych
Link to Faculty page at Northwestern University Psychology Department
A Wordle based on my current CV (Aug 2011) which seems like a surprisingly good snapshot.
Professional interests
Cognitive neuroscience of memory; neurological basis of memory systems; neuroimaging, experimental and computational approaches to understanding memory throughout the brain.
Professional Experience
| Sept. 2004-Present | Associate Professor of Psychology, Northwestern UniversityFellow, Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center, Northwestern University Medical School. Member, Northwestern University Institute for Neuroscience |
| 1998-2004 | Assistant Professor of Psychology, Northwestern University |
| 1997-1998 | Cognitive Neuroscience Research Fellow, Magnetic Resonance Institute & Department of Psychiatry, University of California at San Diego. |
| 1993-1997 | Post-doctoral fellow with Larry R. Squire, Ph.D., Department of Psychiatry University of California at San Diego. |
Education
| 1989-1993 | Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Psychology |
| 1984‑1988 | B.S. Eng in Computer Science, University of Pennsylvania, Moore School of Electrical Engineering |
Academic CV (Aug 2012)
Learning a short, timed, motor sequence
By Paul, Category Reber's Randomness
I stumbled across the “cup song” by Anna Kendrick (from the movie Pitch Perfect, also performed by her on Letterman and originally learned from a “viral video” which sources to a homemade youtube video by Lulu and the Lampshades). The trick is singing a short song while tapping out a short percussion sequence using a …
Paranormal activity
By Paul, Category Reber's Randomness
I did a short interview with an Australian radio show called Ghosts of Oz, hosted by Danni Remali, on Saturday night. The show focuses on paranormal topics and they wanted to talk about deja vu — they found me by the Scientific American AskTheBrains column. They assured me that they wanted a real scientific perspective …
Gobel, E.W., Blomeke, K., Zadikoff, C., Simuni, T., Weintraub, S., Reber, P.J. (in press). Implicit perceptual-motor skill learning in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Parkinson’s disease. Neuropsychology. Abstract Objective: Implicit skill learning is hypothesized to depend on nondeclarative memory that operates independent of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) memory system and instead depends on cortico-striatal circuits …
#overlyhonestmethods
By Paul, Category Reber's Randomness
So apparently a new hastag, #overlyhonestmethods, is burning up the twitterverse. It appears to be driven by students, technicians, post-docs in science labs blowing off steam about the challenges of doing research. It’s funny and probably a good thing in the overall sociology of science — I think. It is a good thing if it …
Explicit pre-training instruction does not improve implicit perceptual-motor sequence learning
By Paul, Category Accepted,Publications
Sanchez, D.J. & Reber, P.J. (2013). Explicit pre-training instruction does not improve implicit perceptual-motor sequence learning. Cognition, 126(3), 341-351. Memory systems theory argues for separate neural systems supporting implicit and explicit memory in the human brain. Neuropsychological studies support this dissociation, but empirical studies of cognitively healthy participants generally observe that both kinds of memory …
How to study better
By Paul, Category Reber's Randomness
I gave a talk at Chicago State University yesterday, the inaugural Scheinbuks Lecture (honoring a new endowment that provides scholarships to outstanding students). In the post-talk Q&A, I got a question about how to study better so that a student would have better performance on the upcoming test. As a memory guy, I should really …
The dark side of implicit learning
By Paul, Category Reber's Randomness
I mentioned this recent study in lab meeting today and decided to collect a few details here. I saw the NY Times report cited/linked in a couple of other places and it is a good start (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/science/bias-persists-against-women-of-science-a-study-says.html?ref=science&_r=0). Key paragraphs: To avoid such complications, the Yale researchers sought to design the simplest study possible. They contacted …
The analogy between brain training and physical exercise
By Paul, Category Reber's Randomness
We often speak colloquially about how cognitive (working memory) training is like a workout for your brain. I think this analogy can be somewhat usefully pushed to illustrate underlying principles. For example, if one were to go to the gym and train on an upper body exercise (e.g., bench press), the muscle gains will be …
Older gamers
Battlefield3′s facebook page reported on a 72yo man with 6500 hours of battlefield gaming play. I saw the link through reddit: http://my.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/yffm4/this_72_year_old_man_has_over_6500_hours_of/ Which includes a link to the facebook page (but no additional supporting details or information). The comment thread includes another link to an older FPS player: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy1zDBW_UAw So here’s the question: what is …
George A. Miller
By Paul, Category Reber's Randomness
George A. Miller just passed away. Many people consider his 7 +/- 2 paper to be the first step in the “cognitive revolution” of the 60s in which Cognitive Psychology came to be a major principle of psychology (replacing behaviorism to some extent, at least until the emergence of behavioral neuroscience). However, his role in …