Programs — Summer 2027 — Psychology & Cognitive Neuroscience
Why We Remember
What We Remember
Memory, Emotion, and the Brain
Dave Clewett
UCLA — Assistant Professor of Psychology
2026 Sloan Research Fellow
Why do some experiences stay with us for decades while others vanish within hours? Why does stress sharpen some memories and distort others? And what does the size of your pupil have to do with any of it?
Dr. Clewett's research explores how stress and emotion shape the content and structure of memory — uncovering the brain mechanisms that support the formation and retrieval of important events. In this seminar, students will engage directly with the questions his lab is currently trying to answer: how our brains transform the continuous flow of experience into discrete, meaningful episodes, and why emotion is so central to that process.
Students will read primary literature, develop an original research question, and produce a conference-style research poster presented at The Athenaeum Annual Symposium.
What you'll explore
- —How emotional arousal determines what we attend to and remember
- —Why anxious individuals are more prone to memory distortion
- —How the brain segments continuous experience into distinct episodes
- —What neuroimaging and pupillometry reveal about memory formation
What you'll produce