My current research focuses on Fast Mapping (FM). Fast Mapping is a process that supports the acquisition of novel associations between words and their referents in very young children, in whom the hippocampal system is not yet fully developed. We aim at exploring the possibility that adults who suffer from severe memory impairments due to neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease may be able to learn new information through Fast Mapping. Moreover, we wish to better understand the inference process that makes Fast Mapping conducive for learning despite patients' memory deficits. To that end we will develop a task that will allow us to track participants' inference process while we record electrophysiological signals from their brain.

During my PhD I studied Memory Distortions from a behavioural and a neuroanatomical point of view. I was interested in highlighting the processes and mechanisms involved in false memories and confabulation. I showed that Alzheimer’s disease patients are more likely to produce such memory distortions, I also highlighted the important role of encoding processes in the production of false memories and I suggested that confabulation can result from the interference of semantic memories into episodic memories.