OUR RESEARCH
Dr. Spreng's research encompasses a wide-ranging program that addresses the most fundamental elements of what it means to be human. This includes how humans interact with the world through experience; how we remember, imagine, and imbue meaning to the world; how these processes develop over the lifespan and may break down with dementia. The fundamental goal of Dr. Spreng's research is to empirically understand the human experience, with the optimistic hope that such knowledge may improve human health and well-being. His work is supported by Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Canadian Institute of Health Research, National Institute on Aging, and the Alzheimer’s Association.
HIGHER-ORDER COGNITION AND BEHAVIOUR
Decision-Making
We leverage neuropsychological tasks and computational modelling to understand how we make decisions to explore or exploit, and the underlying neural mechanisms.
Social Cognition
We study how we understand and navigate our social and emotional environment. This includes investigating the cognitive processes involved, such as social knowledge and mental state inference, and the neural mechanisms that support them.
Memory
We examine how we remember and use knowledge from past experience. This includes investigating autobiographical memory, semantic knowledge, and the neural mechanisms that support these processes.
AGING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Lifespan Development
The adult lifespan comprises gains and losses, as well as shifts in brain structure and function. We use a multimodal approach to disentangle these emergent properties of the adult lifespan.
Healthy Aging
We evaluate factors and mechanisms that contribute to the maintenance and resilience of positive aging trajectories.
Neurodegenerative Disorders
Our clinical research aims to better understand the progression of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's Disease, Frontotemporal Dementia and Parkinson's Disease, and their unique risk factors.
BRAIN NETWORKS AND DYNAMICS
Precision Neuroscience
Our work leverages multimodal neuroimaging techniques to investigate brain structure and function at the individual level.
Thalamocortical Interactions
We use high resolution imaging to examine small-scale nuclei within the thalamus and investigate how this activity contributes to large-scale network connectivity.
Neuromodulatory Systems
We use cell-type specific imaging methods to examine the contributions of neuromodulatory systems to aging and disease.
Check out our recent publications for examples of our research in action!
OUR TOOLS
Our laboratory utilizes different neuroimaging techniques to explore the neural dynamics supporting various cognitive processes across the lifespan. Members of our lab are also interested in using multivariate statistical approaches to assess how the structure and function of the brain changes over the course of healthy aging and pre-symptomatic Alzheimer's disease progression. Overall, by utilizing a combination of neuroimaging techniques, we hope to better understand how the neural dynamics underlying cognitive processes change over time in healthy and pathological aging.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
Functional • Diffusion • Quantitative • Structural
Across 3T (3-Tesla) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and cutting-edge ultra-high field (7-Telsa) imaging, our research utilizes a variety of MRI modalities, including resting-state and functional MRI, diffusion-weighted MRI, quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM), and T1- and T2-weighted anatomical imaging.
Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
Positron emission tomography (PET) is a molecular neuroimaging tool that we use to measure the levels and distribution of specific proteins in the brain. Currently, we are using PET to investigate how proteins expressed by two important types of brain cells, cholinergic and noradrenergic neurons, change during healthy aging and the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and whether these changes are associated with differences in specific cognitive functions.
Magnetoencephalography (MEG)
Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a neuroimaging technology that we use to study the dynamics of brain activity. MEG works by recording the magnetic fields produced by the electrical currents in the brain. When combined with cortical surface models derived from MRI images, we can infer the neural activity that produced the magnetic fields that we record. This gives us insight into how the temporal properties of brain activity across the brain relate to cognition. Currently, we are using MEG to investigate the neural signatures of predictive signalling in the brain, as well as anti-correlations between large-scale functional networks.
Cognitive Testing
Our research examines the contrast between the brain and behaviour. To accomplish this, various cognitive tasks are administered to participants who also undergo neuroimaging sequences.
Blood Sampling
Blood samples collected in our research are used for examining biomarkers, proteins associated with neurological outcomes.