Researcher looking for insights into how we remember

By Lethbridge Herald on June 27, 2025.

Nathan Reiter
Lethbridge Herald
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A new study at the University of Lethbridge will look to help find warning signs of memory loss.

The study, titled “Real-life recall: an fMRI exploration of episodic memory in the real-world,” is led by Chelsea Ekstrand and explores how people remember events from their day-to-day life. 

And she’s looking for local participants to take part.

“This study is focused on trying to figure out how we actually remember things in real life so we can actually get a better picture of what happens when we start forgetting.” Ekstrand explained in an interview with the Herald. “As we age, we just naturally begin to lose our memory and certain things are going to go first, like you might not remember where you put your keys in the morning.”

With the busy nature of day-to-day life, Ekstrand says the study is looking to figure out more about how the brain retains information.

“One of the things that me and my lab are really interested in is figuring out how the brain remembers the things that are important. There’s so much information that’s coming at us in our daily lives and somehow our brain has to kind of pick the important things and save them for later so we can use them. 

This study is really a step forward in actually understanding how we’re remembering things that we’re experiencing in our everyday lives and how we can use this as a tool to figure out what’s going wrong in things like dementia and memory loss as we age.

“Oftentimes, you don’t know when you’re forgetting something. That’s kind of the hallmark of forgetting is you don’t know because it’s not there. 

When people are being diagnosed with these sorts of memory loss issues, it’s by a loved one or someone in their life because they’re not actually noticing it. This study is really trying to find these markers in the brain when information isn’t quite getting in there. That might also help us diagnose these disorders earlier and really allow us to see what’s going on in this process between when we’re actually experiencing something and when we later need to recall it and bring it to memory at a different point.”

The study partnered with the Fine Arts Department at the University of Lethbridge to create custom scenes, specifically for participants to view. 

Participants in the study must be between 55 and 75 years of age, have normal or corrected vision and be comfortable taking a short walking tour. Participants of the study will complete two sessions of two hours each taking place seven days apart. 

More information on the study is available by contacting Dr. Chelsea Ekstrand by phone at 403-332-4582 or by email at ekstrandneurolab@gmail.com