Lara Bridge
Research Assistant & Lab Manager
Research Interests
My research interests involve the neuropsychology behind maladaptive emotional memories, and investigating ways to alleviate their detrimental effects on well-being. An accumulating body of evidence has shown that reactivated long-term memories undergo a dynamic process called reconsolidation, where previously consolidated memories become destabilised at retrieval and require de novo protein synthesis to restabilise and maintain the memory engram. The reactivation of consolidated memories render them labile and susceptible to interference, and research has shown that they can be disrupted by amnestic agents or strengthened by memory enhancers. This retrieval-induced plasticity offers an opportunity for memory modification, and has huge implications for the clinical field as a single-session intervention. I am currently working as the Lab Manager and Research Assistant for the Amsterdam Emotional Memory Lab, where I assist projects ranging from fear conditioning and fMRI studies, and projects that translate this work to the clinical field. I am also interested in how we can develop biological or neural markers for memory destabilisation and restabilisation, as this would help optimise the intervention, especially in the light of individual variance and complexity of emotional memories.
Background
During my 4-year degree in Psychology at Cardiff University (September 2013 – June 2017, first-class honours), I completed various research placements including a year as a Guest Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig. Since graduating, I have worked as a Research Assistant for Prof Rik Henson at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge (October 2017 – January 2019). In February 2019 I started working as the Lab Manager and Research Assistant for the Amsterdam Emotional Memory Lab at the Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Amsterdam.