Why is memory so fickle?
Our lab uses brain dynamics to shed new light on this long-standing puzzle. Do slow fluctuations in neurochemical levels, for instance, shape how we learn and remember across the day and as we age? Do brain oscillations rhythmically shift us between acquiring new memories and recalling them? And, might these fluctuations in the brain and mind prepare us to better use our memories in our ever-changing surroundings.
RESEARCH
Check out the questions we are working towards answering.
TEAM
Meet the members of our lab.
PUBLICATIONS
Access an exhaustive list of our published work.
Recent highlights from our lab:
News
May 12, 2026 - Congratulations to Alan, our lab manager, for his offer from McMaster Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. See our lab manager posting below!
April 6th, 2026 - Big Congratulations to our First-year PhD Student Mila for receiving the Canada Graduate Research Scholarship––Master's Program (NSERC)! Woohoo! And also congratulations to Lily Huang for receiving the NSERC URSA for the summer! Lily will be working full-time with Mila on individual differences in autobiographical memory and mental time travel!
March 10th- Shout out to Matt and Catalina, who attended the Cognitive Neuroscience Society 2026 Conference and shared their posters/talk!
March 2nd, 2026 - A huge congratulations to Thomas Biba for his Nature Human Behaviour publication and for his first paper in the lab! "Episodic memory encoding fluctuates at a theta rhythm of 3–10 Hz". See our publication page to read it now!
Nov 30 - Congratulations to Dr. Youm for her newest publication, Aging and episodic memory specificity: Evidence challenging a domain-general pattern separation decline
And congratulations to Catalina for her pre-print, Memory strength at reactivation, not memory age, governs prediction error driven updating of naturalistic event memory
Check them out at our publication page!
August 30 - We celebrated the lab's 10-year anniversary together with the Finn LAND lab! Congratulations to Dr. Katherine Duncan and her decade-long partner in crime, I mean, science, Dr. Amy Finn!
July 10 - Congratulations to Josie Davies on starting a new position at Whole Kids Health as their clinic manager
June 10 - Congratulations to Matt and Mila who were both awarded the Ontario Graduate Scholarships (OGS), woo hoo!
June 9 - Congratulation to Tien Yang on winning the 2025 Glushko Senior Thesis Award for outstanding thesis in cognitive science, based on her thesis on age-related declines in network specialization in the basal forebrain!
May 25 - The Duncan Lab welcomes Alan Peng, the new lab manager and Mila Mac Neil, this year's new graduate student!
May 5 - Katherine and the grad students enjoying the Cherry Blossoms by Robarts Library. Welcome to the lab Mila!
April 28 - Congratulations Austin McInnis on your summer UTEA Award!
April 22 - Congratulations Ethina Emma Islam on your summer NSERC Award!
April 11 - Congratulations to Matt and Catalina who presented at CNS 2025!
April 11 - Congratulations to Sanjivan Loganathan who was accepted to Masters of Science in Psychology at the Culham Lab at Western University.
Another congratulations to Tien Yang who was accepted to start her PhD in the Computational & Cognitive Neuroscience Lab (Polk Lab) at the University of Michigan!
March 7 - Congratulations to Dr. Ariana Youm who just defended her PhD dissertation!
Feb 26 - Congratulations to Alexandera Decker, Duncan Lab Alumni who has just been awarded a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship! Great work, Lexi!
Feb 14 - Please welcome our visiting scholar for the winter, Dr. Connie Solidate. Grab a coffee with him while he's here, he likes it iced!
Dec 9 - Ariana presented at Psychonomics. Here is her poster title: Does More Necessarily Mean Better?
Investigating Basal Forebrain Functional Responsivity And Episodic Memory Processes in Older Adults
Nov 7 - Thomas, Robyn and Catalina presented at SfN 2024 in Chicago!
Oct 18th - Congratulations Robyn on your pre-print!
Congratulations Robyn on your preprint:
Personalized neural state segmentation: validating the GSBS algorithm for individual-level fMRI data
Oct 18th- Congratulations Thomas on your pre-print!
Congratulations Thomas on your preprint
June 15, 2024 - Congratulations Anuya Patil!
Congratulations Dr. Patil on your convocation!
Research
Recent work:
Click to read more.