Special Topics in Brain and Cognitive Sciences: Multiple Memory Systems
MIT's graduate seminar examines memory as a set of distinct learning systems rather than one unified faculty, each with its own cognitive profile and neural substrate. Sessions work through current debates on the architecture of memory, weighing evidence from functional neuroimaging studies using fMRI and PET to test competing models of how the brain stores and retrieves different kinds of information. Materials on MIT OpenCourseWare include the syllabus, weekly reading lists drawn from primary research literature, and discussion topics used to structure seminar sessions. The course suits students who already have background in cognitive neuroscience and want to engage directly with the primary literature and open controversies in memory research, rather than a general introduction to the topic. No certificate is offered; all materials are free to use under MIT's open license.