Elham Ghanbarian


Phone: (403) 394-3937
e-mail: elham.ghanbarian@uleth.ca
Lab: EP 1268

Biography

I have always been fascinated by the beauties of life science and biology. I studied medicine in the “Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences” and then practiced for a few years as a general physician. During these years I realized that more than practicing, I am interested in research particularly about the brain. It’s the most amazing wonder of the nature that our cognition, emotions and intelligence emerge from the collaboration of a hundred billions of single cells. Then I entered the PhD program in cognitive neuroscience in the “Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM)”, Tehran, Iran. During my PhD I studied the effect of dopaminergic neurons, which convey reward and motivational signals in the brain, on hippocampal synaptic plasticity and memory formation.

Since October 2014, I am a post doc fellow working under the supervision of one of the pioneers in the field of learning and memory, Prof. Bruce L. McNaughton, who provided strong evidence for the “memory trace reactivation” theory. According to this theory, the hippocampus first encodes memories for external events during wakefulness and then during subsequent periods of calmness or sleep, memory traces are “reactivated” or “replayed” in both hippocampus and cortex. These replays are considered as the underlying mechanism for memory consolidation. By using the advantages of imaging techniques, I’ll investigate the role of hippocampus in the formation of cortical replays.

Outside the lab, I am interested in nature tourism, travelling, biking, reading, learning languages, etc.