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Chantal Stern
Chantal Stern is a neuroscientist who uses techniques including functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the brain mechanisms of memory. She is the Director of the Brain, Behavior and Cognition program and a Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University. After completing a degree at McGill University, she performed her doctoral research at Oxford University with Prof. Richard Passingham.

Imaging of hippocampal activation during encoding
Prof. Stern published the earliest functional magnetic resonance imaging study showing robust hippocampal activation during memory encoding. Previous imaging studies did not observe robust hippocampal activity during verbal memory tasks, but this study demonstrated clear activity during encoding of complex novel visual scenes. This result was subsequently replicated in numerous studies demonstrating activity in the hippocampus and associated parahippocampal cortical regions during encoding of new information, including work showing that the magnitude of hippocampal activity during encoding correlates with recognition performance in subsequent memory tests.

Medial temporal lobe activity during working memory for novel stimuli
Stern demonstrated that working memory for novel stimuli involves activation of medial temporal lobe structures. This activation of medial temporal lobe for novel stimuli contrasted with activation for familiar stimuli that primarily appeared in the prefrontal cortex and parietal cortex, which were the focus of most previous fMRI studies of working memory function for familiar stimuli. Subsequent data supports this finding, including work showing impairments of working memory for novel stimuli caused by medial temporal lobe lesions. In subsequent work, Stern linked this medial temporal lobe activity to cellular mechanisms of persistent spiking.

Hyperactivity in the hippocampus in presymptomatic familial Alzheimer’s disease
Research in the Stern laboratory has addressed a range of clinical disorders, including HIV dementia, Parkinson’s dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. In research with Dr. Yakeel Quiroz, Stern showed early hyperactivity in the hippocampal formation in subjects with a presenilin1 mutation that results in familial Alzheimer’s disease. This finding in young presymptomatic subjects provides a dramatic extension beyond earlier studies showing hippocampal hyperactivation in elderly subjects with mild cognitive impairment.