Cristina Alberini

Professor in the Center for Neural Science, New York University

Cristina Alberini, Professor in the Center for Neural Science, New York University, has been studying the biological mechanisms of long-term memory for the last 20 years. Her studies explore the biological mechanisms of memory consolidation and reconsolidation, the processes by which newly learned information become long-lasting memories, and how memories are modulated and integrated into complex behavioral manifestations. Her studies also aim at utilizing the basic understandings of the mechanisms of memory formation to enhance memories and prevent forgetting, or disrupt pathogenic memories. Both approaches have important translational applications.

She graduated from the University of Pavia in Italy with Honors and obtained a Doctorate in Research in Immunological Sciences from the University of Genoa in Italy. She trained as a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University, studying the role of gene expression regulation during long-term synaptic plasticity consolidation in Aplysia californica. From 1997 to 2000, she served on the Faculty of Brown University before joining Mount Sinai in 2001 where she worked until 2011. In 2011 she joined the Center for Neural Science at NYU. She has received several awards including Hirschl-Weill Career Scientist Award, NARSAD Independent Investigator Award, McKnight Memory and Cognitive Disorder Award, Mount Sinai Dean’s Award for Excellence in Basic Science Research, Paul Harris Fellow -Rotary Club Cremona and NIMH-MERIT award.

Since 2004 she has been a member of the Council of the Molecular and Cellular Cognition Society (MCCS); she served as the society’s Treasurer from 2006 to 2009 and then as President from 2009 to 2012.

Participant In:

Aby Warburg: Art, Neuroscience, and Psychoanalysis: Day 2

Sunday, October 13th
9:30 - 4:15PM

Past Event

This two-day symposium explores Warburg’s ideas and their adumbrations, e.g., his preoccupations with – and intuitions about – memory, both in relation to different forms of artistic creation and in anticipation of concepts related to neuroplasticity and neuroesthetics; the significance and fluency of the image – its elliptical and metaphoric functions – and of affect… read more »

Women and Science

Saturday, April 26, 2014
2:30-4:30 pm

Past Event

An ancient Egyptian hieroglyph at Saqqara declared Merit-Ptah as “the Chief Physician.” 4700 years after her achievement, we ask: How are women in science faring? It is a well-documented phenomenon that for all STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects, the gender gap widens in the progression from undergraduate study, through graduate and post-doctoral work,… read more »

The Helix Center is pleased to announce receipt of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation in support of a series of fourteen roundtables addressing big questions in the physical, natural, and biological sciences and the humanities. The topics are: Knowledge and Limitations; The Span of Infinity; Complexity and Emergence; The Search for Immortality;  The Sublime Experience; The Meditative State; The… read more »

Speak, Memory

Saturday, November 7, 2015
2:30-4:30 pm

Past Event

Over the last thirty years, significant progress has been made in our understanding of the various types of memory, the neural processes of consolidation and reconsolidation, and the biochemistry of memory, as well as the malleability and limits of autobiographical memory. How might continued research help us identify the importance of memory in normal development,… read more »

The Many Minds of Memory

Saturday, January 30, 2021 at 2:30pm

Past Event

Memory is not a dusty cellar, open treasure chest, or sealed pandora’s box. It is a dynamic process, a stream of renditions and reflections. It conveys to us not what strictly happened, but embeds us in a retained internal moment, in an external encounter, or an imprint from another’s story. Memory re-enforces, revises, re-edits, and re-interprets… read more »