Mike Starrett Ambrose: Cognitive and neural mechanisms for flexible spatial representations across the lifespan
Title
Cognitive and neural mechanisms for flexible spatial representations across the lifespan
Mentor
Department
Biosketch
Mike Starrett Ambrose (“stAIR-it ... AM-brohz”) joined the Cognitive and Brain Sciences faculty in the Department of Psychology at the ҹɫÊÓƵ in the Fall of 2026. He began his research career as an undergraduate research assistant and then lab manager at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studying working memory and attention under the supervision of Brad Postle, Ph.D. He completed his doctoral training with Arne Ekstrom, Ph.D. – first at the University of California, Davis and later at the University of Arizona – where he first started studying human spatial cognition and navigation using immersive virtual reality. Before coming to the University, Mike was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Irvine working with Liz Chrastil, Ph.D. to study spatial neuroscience. He is originally from Green Bay, Wisconsin.
His cognitive neuroscience research program aims to understand how the mind and brain facilitate complex spatial cognition and navigation behaviors with the ultimate goal of augmenting human cognition to enhance neurotypical function or to mitigate the effects of aging and disease. Work in his laboratory addresses questions related to the following themes: 1) The fundamental structure and mechanics of spatial representations, 2) flexible use of spatial information dependent on behavior context, 3) interactions between spatial cognition and other cognitive processes, and 4) changes in spatial abilities across the life span and in neurological disorders.
Project overview
The number of Americans suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is expected to nearly double by 2050, making advances in early diagnosis and intervention paramount. Common symptoms of early-stage AD and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) include disorientation and increased instances of getting lost. Recent research has recognized deficits in spatial cognition as a potential harbinger of AD, but several crucial gaps exist in our understanding of this relationship. First, studies often focus on the medial temporal lobe (MTL) – usually the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex, but the MTL is only one part of a network of brain areas (including retrosplenial cortex and posterior parietal cortex) that supports spatial processing. Testing hypotheses that incorporate these more superficial nodes in the network will better facilitate convergent lines of research. Second, the field is still only beginning to understand the mechanisms that support these spatial processes in healthy young adults, meaning that further research in healthy aging will be vital for establishing a foundational understanding for how the mind and brain change in diseases associated with aging like AD. Addressing these gaps will provide insight into early warning signs of cognitive decline and disease as well as potential neuroprotective behavioral and brain processes.
Many studies have attempted to characterize predominantly egocentric (ego; viewpoint-based) or allocentric (allo; configuration-based or map-like) components of spatial memory independent but flexibly switching between ego and allo frames is crucial for successful navigation. Recently, more emphasis has been placed on periods of spatial transformation from ego-to-allo or allo-to-ego (e.g., orienting to a map before navigating and re-orienting to it after getting lost). Animal and computational models of spatial cognition suggest that posteromedial regions of the human brain, including retrosplenial cortex, are the most likely candidates to support this isomorphism. Connecting this work with deficits in AD and other neurological diseases will require a better understanding of the human brain implements these reference frame switches as well as how this ability changes over the adult lifespan. This proposal will utilize virtual reality and functional magnetic resonance imaging to characterize changes in the flexibility of spatial memory across healthy adult aging.
Student Training Opportunities
- Participant recruitment and screening
- Behavioral data collection using immersive virtual reality
- Neuroimaging data collection using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
- Learning fMRI preprocessing and quality control pipelines using the python programming language
- Opportunities for further data analysis (behavioral data and univariate generalized linear modeling of brain imaging data)
Required Qualifications
PSY 101 - General Psychology (required) and PSY 240 - Introduction to Research Methods (preferred; can be in-progress)
Maximum hours per week
The PREP student will be expected to work on the project for a maximum of 10 hours per week.
Pack Research Experience Program information and application