Alexa Tompary

Alexa Tompary is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. She earned her PhD in psychology at New York University and completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Tompary has received grants from the National Institutes of Health and published in journals including Neuron, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Journal of Neuroscience, and PNAS.

Dr. Tompary is the head of the Memory and Concepts (MAC) lab, which uses cognitive neuroscience approaches to study the relationship between episodic memory and concept knowledge. She additionally investigates how these forms of information interact and combine as a function of their neural bases. The lab uses functional neuroimaging (fMRI) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to tackle questions such as how the brain stores transforms long-term memories to create new knowledge, how prior knowledge can shape memories for new experiences, and how our conceptual knowledge can be updated by new events. The interplay between episodic memory and concept knowledge shapes the information that we draw on when we make decisions, creatively solve problems, and plan for the future – higher-level cognitive processes that the lab plans to interrogate through the lens of memory interactions in upcoming work.