Katherine Duncan doesn't experience memory the way most people do. She can't vividly relive the past or picture it in her mind.
That personal trait sparked a two-decade-long quest to understand why memory works so differently for each of us - research that could help predict who's aging healthily and who's at risk for dementia.
Duncan is one of five University of Toronto scholars to receive Connaught Mid-Career Researcher Awards , which provide up to $250,000 to foster research excellence and enhance competitiveness for external funding. With the funding, she will explore why people remember the same experiences so differently.
An associate professor in the department of psychology in U of T's Faculty of Arts & Science, Duncan says the award will support her in pursuing "higher risk, higher reward" research that explores creative ideas and generates feasibility data necessary for major federal grants.
"[It's] giving me the dedicated resources to focus in on this really exciting new research area, and take the calculated risks necessary to make new discoveries," Duncan says.
Leah Cowen, U of T's vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives, says the awards address a crucial gap in the research funding landscape.
"We recognize that mid-career researchers are at a pivotal point in their careers. This support provides the resources to pursue significant research and innovative ideas - and strengthen their competitiveness for major funding from external agencies," she says.
Cowen encourages mid-career researchers across U of T to review the award criteria, noting that the next round of applications is now open .
Much of Duncan's research focuses on variability in memory, specifically "why it is that we sometimes vividly remember experiences without effort, and other times we struggle to even recall a colleague's name. It's more than just embarrassing; it's a mystery."
She says the one answer lies in something called "event segmentation" - how our brains automatically chop continuous experience into distinct moments.
"If you and I have the same experience, I might chunk it into different events than you do, leading to fundamentally different interpretations and memories," explains Duncan, who is also the associate chair of the department of psychology. "We don't know much about why."
Duncan says she didn't see her experience reflected in textbook descriptions of episodic memory when she was completing her undergrad in psychology at U of T nearly two decades ago.
While many people recall past experiences with rich sensory detail, Duncan's memory doesn't work that way: she has little visual imagery and doesn't experience the sense of "mental time travel" that memory researchers often describe.
"I have a clear sense of knowing, which is what we refer to as more of a semantic memory," she says. "I'm great at understanding how things work and building knowledge structures. But, I can't tell you much about what my past experiences looked or felt like."
As a researcher, Duncan studies the neurochemical systems that are among the first affected in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. These chemicals help regulate how we form and retrieve memories, and the neurons that produce them are especially vulnerable to age-related degeneration.
By understanding how these systems affect memory and event segmentation, Duncan hopes to develop new ways to assess brain health - research that may have profound implications for understanding cognitive decline.
"I believe that deeply understanding the functions - not just the structure - of these regions will more powerfully estimate how well a region is aging and what that could mean for an individual's cognitive trajectory."
For Duncan, becoming a faculty member at U of T felt like a full-circle moment. "It was such an amazing opportunity to be able to return back home to the department and institution that first got me interested in this field of research," she says.
The four other U of T faculty members to receive Connaught Mid-Career Research Awards alongside Duncan are:
Hilary Brown , associate professor, department of health and society, U of T Scarborough: "Healthcare provider training on disability and sexual and reproductive health"
Alexander Ensminger , associate professor, department of biochemistry, Temerty Faculty of Medicine: "Evolution vs artificial intelligence: Establishing design principles of pathogenic inhibition"
Thierry Mallevaey , associate professor, department of immunology, Temerty Faculty of Medicine: "Exploring the roles of MAIT cells in intestinal inflammation"
Irina D. Mihalache , associate professor, Faculty of Information: "Re-writing national history in Romanian museums, 1850s-1989: Stories from museum professionals"
The Mid-Career Researcher Award is supported by the Connaught Fund - the largest internal university research funding program in Canada. Established in 1972 through the sale of Connaught Medical Research Laboratories, the fund has since provided more than $191 million to U of T scholars through a range of funding programs that support the university research community across all disciplines and career stages.
