Lulu Liu

Lulu is a third-year PhD student. She is interested in exploring the underlying cognitive and neural processes of memory for the past and the future in healthy ageing and dementia. Her doctoral research focuses on understanding the profiles of subjective time and related cognitions (specifically, episodic memory, prospective memory, and future thinking) in ageing and neurodegenerative disorders, using experimental tasks, questionnaires, as well as multimodal neuroimaging methods.

Forefront Group: FRONTIER Research Group, Memory and Imagination in Neurological Disorders team (MIND) – MIND group

Supervisors:

Prof. Muireann Irish, Prof. Olivier Piguet and Dr. Daniel Roquet

Expertise:

  • Multimodal neuroimaging
  • Neuropsychology
  • Cognitive neuroscience

Affiliate Organisations:

The University of Sydney

Neurodegeneration of interest:

FTD, AD, Time perception, Memory, Future thinking, Ageing

Specific Skills:

  • Cognitive assessment
  • Statistical modelling
  • Multimodal neuroimaging acquisition and analysis

Project - Temporal cognition: Subjective time and its connection with prospection in frontotemporal dementia

Research Project Abstract

The aims are exploring the profiles of subjective time in healthy aging, and its association with memory-related cognitive processes, and investigating the profiles of subjective time in neurodegenerative disorders (Alzheimer’s disease, Frontotemporal dementia), and the related functional relevance. This project is funded from 2018 to 2021.

Disease area:

AD, FTD, Ageing

Research Project Description

Subjective time, specifically, the subjective experience of time, represents a fascinating yet poorly understood aspect of human cognition, from the perception of time to the capacity to traverse to the past and future. Mounting evidence suggests disruption to the delicate balance between the subjective experience and objective passing of time in both healthy ageing and frontotemporal dementia. This project firstly explored how subjective time changes in ageing by comparing younger and older adults using time perception tasks and time experience scale, then applied time perception tasks in patients with dementia and suggested the different profiles of time perception across dementia syndromes. Furthermore, this project explored retrospective and prospective memory (past- and future-oriented memory) in dementia, and reported impaired temporal-related memory and the contribution of inferior prefrontal cortex in Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia. The findings elucidated different profiles in subjective time in healthy ageing and frontotemporal dementia, and the connection with its functional relevance, prospective memory.

Key Publications from this project

  • Liu, L., Roquet, D., Ahmed, R. M., Hodges, J. R., Piguet, O., Irish, M. (2020). Examining prefrontal contributions to past- and future-oriented memory disturbances in daily life in dementia, Cortex, 134, 307-319.

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