CSHC - Center for the Study of Human Cognition

Cognition and plasticity throughout the human lifespan
Throughout life, our mental capacities and brains are under continuous alteration, regardless of health, sickness or injuries. Some changes are part of positive development, others are debilitating. We know too little about the mechanisms underlying different types of change in brain and cognition, and whether, and how, we ourselves can initiate, enhance or slow them.

More about this project can be found at www.walhovd.com/neuro

Mild Cognitive Impairment – the Gøteborg-Oslo (GO) project.

Early diagnosis and treatment of dementing illnesses is a major goal of modern clinical neuroscience. Mild cognitive impairment is a symptom associated with increased risk of developing dementia, but itself too unspecific to lead to a diagnosis. When impairment is supported by thorough clinical assessment or neuropsychological evidence, the likelihood of a dementing illness is considerably increased, but causal mechanisms and prognosis is still uncertain.

Even when the external object of perception has departed, the impressions
it has made persist, and are themselves objects of perception.
Aristotle, De anima

The overall aim of the present project is to close the gap in our understanding of visual perception and visual memory, focusing on the question of overlap and uniqueness of perception and memory processes.  When -- and possibly where -- are perceptual representations transformed to memory representations, and to what degree does retrieval of information from visual memory involve regeneration of on-line visual processes? To answert these questions, the techniques of experimental cognitive psychology are combined with functional brain imaging (fMRI). 

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People exposed to shocking, horrific events, experience longlasting negative effects. Some suffer a chronic combination of symptoms that is at the core of the debilitating condition called posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): re-experiencing, heightened physiological preparedness and avoidance behaviours. 

Aging was recently described as a “neurocatastrophe” involving increased oxidative stress, disturbed energy homeostasis, accumulation of damaged proteins, and lesions in nucleic acids, making aging the primary risk factor for development of neurodegenerative diseases. Age-related diseases constitute a huge burden for individuals and societies and problems are likely to grow as the proportions of the population vulnerable to these diseases increase.

Emanating from the fields of cognitive psychology, developmental psychology and social psychology, the research on eyewitnesses in everyday and forensic contexts covers a wide range of basic and applied research questions, employs a wide range of research designs, and combines qualitative analyses with hard-core experimental data. The research of the psychology and law group mirrors this broad-scale approach, combining studies of factors affecting the performance of eyewitnesses with studies of decision processes involved in the judgments of reliability and credibility of witnesses. We are currently pursuing three lines of research.

1) What do people believe about memory?
2) Factors affecting the perceived credibility of eyewitnesses
3) Social biases in face recognition

One aim with the project is to investigate basic cognitive control aspects of executive functions and other key attentional and memory functions in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), with or without a co-morbid anxiety disorder, as compared to healthy subjects. Another main aim is to investigate the relations between polymorphisms identified within the promoter region of the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and cognitive control in both MDD patients and in healthy subjects. The 5-HTTLPR genotype seems to represent a classic susceptibility factor for mood changes and affective disorders. However, although there are some indications from studies with the rapid tryptophan paradigm, no cognitive vulnerability markers or endophenotypes have been identified. A possible interactive effect with gender will also be studied. A third aim is to use multimodal neuroimaging methods to investigate the effects of  serotonin transporter polymorphisms on affective processing in healthy people and in previously depressed subjects.