FACULTY AWARD: Norman to study sleep and memory with NSF BRAIN Initiative award

Kenneth Norman, a Princeton University professor of psychology, will explore what happens to our memories as we sleep as part of a three-year, $594,000 project supported by the National Science Foundation. Norman will collaborate with researchers at Northwestern University to develop new data-analysis, neural network-modeling and brain-imaging tools that would enable scientists to track individual memories in the human brain as they compete and are modified during sleep. The project is intended to better scientists' understanding of how memory storage changes during sleep. The project is one of 16 nationwide selected by the NSF to receive a total of $13.1 million intended to support neural and cognitive research related to the federal BRAIN Initiative. Announced in 2013, the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative aims to map the activity of all the brain's neurons.