Brandon Ally
Assistant Professor of Neurology
Assistant Professor of Psychology & Psychiatry
Ally’s lab studies how memory breaks down during the course of healthy and diseased aging, with particular interest in visual memory and object recognition. Recent work has focused on the interaction of implicit and explicit memory in patients with Alzheimer's disease. Despite severely degraded episodic memory, these patients show relatively intact perceptual priming and a preserved picture superiority effect. The lab is currently using a wide range of methodology, from experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience (eye-tracking, ERPs, fMRI), to determine the underpinnings of these preserved aspects of memory, with the ultimate goal of developing interventions to improve memory performance in patients with Alzheimer's disease.
Representative Publications
- Ally BA. (2011) Using EEG and MEG to understanding brain physiology in dementia. In Kowall NW and Budson AE. (Eds) The Handbook of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. Blackwell Publishing.
- O'Connor MK and Ally BA. (2010). Using stimulus form change to understand memorial familiarity for pictures and words in patients with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. Neuropsychologia, 48, 2068-2074.
- Addis DR, Sacchetti D, Ally BA, Budson AE, and Schacter DL. (2009). Episodic simulation of future events is impaired in mild Alzheimer's disease. Neuropsychologia, 47, 2660-2671.
- Ally BA, McKeever JD, Waring JD, and Budson AE. (2009). Pictures preserve frontal memorial processes in patients with mild cognitive impairment. Neuropsychologia, 47, 2044-2055.
- Ally BA, Gold CA, and Budson AE. (2009). An evaluation of recollection and familiarity in Alzheimer's disease and mild Cognitive impairment using receiver operating characteristics. Brain and Cognition 69, 504-513.
- Ally BA, Gold CA, and Budson AE. (2009). The picture superiority effect in patients with Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment. Neuropsychologia 47, 595-598.
- Ally BA, Simons JS, McKeever JD, Peers PV, and Budson AE. (2008). Parietal contributions to recollection: Electrophysiological evidence from aging and patients with parietal lesions. Neuropsychologia 46, 1800-1812.
- Simons JS, Peers PV, Hwang DY, Ally BA, Fletcher PC, and Budson AE. (2008). Is the parietal lobe necessary for recollection in humans? Neuropsychologia 46, 1185-1191.
- Ally BA, Waring JD, Beth EH, McKeever JD, Milberg WP, and Budson AE. (2008). Aging memory for pictures: Using high-density event-related potentials to understand the effect of aging on the picture superiority effect. Neuropsychologia 46, 287-297.
- Hwang DY, Gallo DA, Ally BA, Black PM, Schacter DL, and Budson AE. (2007). Diagnostic retrieval monitoring in patients with frontal lobe lesions: Further exploration of the distinctiveness heuristic. Neuropsychologia 45, 2543-2552.
- Ally BA and Budson AE. (2007). The worth of pictures: Using high density event-related potentials to understand the memorial power of pictures and the dynamics of recognition memory. NeuroImage35, 378-395.
- Ally BA, Jones GE, Cole JA, and Budson AE. (2007). Sensory gating in patients with Alzheimer's disease and their biological children. American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias 21, 439-447.