Memory Expert Joins Psych Faculty

Randy L. Buckner, a professor who studies memory using techniques he pioneered in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), is joining Harvard’s psychology department this year from Washington University in St. Louis.

At Harvard, Buckner will help form the world’s premier research group on memory, Psychology Department Chair Stephen M. Kosslyn wrote in an e-mail.

“The addition of Professor Buckner will allow us to build a research group second to none,” Kosslyn wrote.

At age 35, Buckner is considered to be the best researcher of his age group in the field, Kosslyn wrote, and is also unusually young to be awarded tenure at Harvard.

Buckner has distinguished himself through innovative research techniques in fMRI and his work on the brain and memory.

In one study, Buckner found that it was possible to predict, on average, what new information a research subject would remember later by observing certain pathways in brain functioning.

Buckner said in an interview yesterday that he has also focused on the effects of aging and disease on memory. Buckner observed that the plaques which cause Alzheimer’s disease form on areas of the brain that are used in “default” brain activity. In other words, he said, Alzheimer’s seems to be affecting the much-used brain areas that are active when people are not doing or thinking about anything in particular.

Buckner has collaborated extensively in the past with Harvard Professor of Psychology Daniel L. Schacter, also an expert on memory. Now that they are both at Harvard, it will be easier for them to work together.

“The opportunity to be near him was a big attraction,” Buckner said.

Schacter praised Buckner’s combination of technical and theoretical sophistication.

“He is able to integrate strength in the methodology with strength in the conceptual side,” Schacter said.

In the 1990s, Buckner helped develop event-related fMRI, which allows scientists observing the brain to distinguish between mental events occurring a few seconds apart. Previously, scientists could only differentiate between mental events that took place a half a minute to a minute apart, Bucker said.

At Harvard, Buckner will spearhead the fMRI center being built for the new Center for Brain Science, said Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology Joshua R. Sanes, who directs the Center for Brain Science. The fMRI center is scheduled to open in 2007, Sanes said.

“The fact that we’re going to have scanners on campus is really exciting,” Buckner said. He added that he is especially pleased that the new facilities will allow undergraduates to get hands-on imaging experience.

The opportunity to work at the Center for Brain Science was another reason Buckner chose to come to Harvard, he said. Buckner was attracted to the interdisciplinary nature of the center, which studies brain behavior “across these different levels, molecules to cells to brain systems to behaviors.”

Buckner will be the third affiliate of the Center for Brain Science to come to Harvard from Washington University in St. Louis.

He said he plans to begin teaching undergraduates next fall.