Benjamin J. Griffiths

About me:

I am a cognitive neuroscientist with a passion for understanding how the human brain forms and retrieves long-term memories. I ask fundamental questions about the biological nature of memory. For example: what roles do neural oscillations play in memory? And, to what extent do the neural hubs of memory and navigation overlap?

I'm also interested in exploring how these insights can be used to benefit society. Can we use this knowledge to help those experiencing dementia? Or apply it in the classroom? 

To tackle these questions, I use a wide range of neuroimaging techniques (e.g., intracranial EEG, MEG and fMRI) in conjunction with advanced statistical analyses (e.g., forward encoding models, linear classifiers) and behavioural interventions (e.g., sensory entrainment). 

Latest News:

16th March 2025: We're at the MAC in Birmingham today for Brain Awareness Week showing off some lovely community art, all inspired by recent CHBH research into the brain and mental health.

10th March 2025: Our recent paper investigating metacognitive awareness of memory distortions was one of the top downloaded papers from Communications Psychology in 2024. Check out the full collection of papers here.

13th February 2025: We have a new opinion piece out discussing how the brain might compress and reconstruct memories in a way that overcomes it's pesky storage limitations. Check it out here.

2024:

3rd October 2024: A feature-based priority map in the visual cortex? Find out more in the latest preprint by Katharina Duecker, Ole Jensen and co. It was great to be a part of this!

6th September 2024: Our project investigating the spatiotemporal trajectories of memory retrieval is now out in eNeuro. You can grab a copy here. Spectacular work led by the incredible Julia Lifanov-Carr and Maria Wimber.

3rd July 2024: And now I'm in Tokyo at ASSC! I'll be talking about our latest work, looking into metacognitive awareness in episodic memory.

1st July 2024: Check out our latest work looking into whether we should really trust our memories, now published in Communications Psychology. Grab it here.

24th June 2024: Delighted to have be awarded the Cermak/Corkin Award by the Memory Disorders Research Society. It's a real honour to have my research recognised by such an influential society.

23th June 2024: I'm in Seoul presenting at OHBM this week - come and learn all about how to stimulate the brain to augment memory retrieval!

7th May 2024: Our work investigating how the brain represents information about veridical head direction is now published in Nature Human Behaviour, check it out here or get a paywall-free version here.

5th April 2024: Are we aware of when our memories are distorted by related knowledge? Find out in our latest pre-print, now available on PsyArXiv (link).

2023

27th October 2023: We're in Dublin this week at MEG-UKI chatting about our recent MEG study exploring how gamma-band sensory stimulation modulates ongoing neural activity in aid of memory. Come and say hi!

12th September 2023: I'm at the British Association for Cognitive Neuroscience discussing some of our latest work using gamma-band sensory stimulation to enhance episodic memory. Check out the full programme here.

8th August 2023: Our review exploring the mechanistic contributions of gamma oscillations to episodic memory is now published in Trends in Neurosciences. Read it here.

26th July 2023: Can we boost memory with gamma-band sensory stimulation? Our latest work suggests we can! Read about it here.

23rd May 2023: Tonight I'll be discussing the importance of oscillations to memory at the MAC, Birmingham, as part of Pint of Science!

24th April 2023: I'll be presenting recent work looking at improving memory using gamma-band sensory stimulation at Learning and Memory this week.

26th January 2023: A paper double-feature. Check out our new work examining how the human brain represents veridical head direction (link) and how this information is reactivated in memory and sleep (link).

23rd January 2023: We recently contributed a chapter to the forthcoming book 'Intracranial EEG: A Guide for Cognitive Neuroscientists', which will be published by Springer on 30th March. What to see a sneak peak? Check it out here.

2022

15th December 2022: Explore how the brain reconstructs memories during retrieval in the latest preprint by Julia Lifanov and Maria Wimber. Check it out here. It was great to play a part in this!

17th November 2022: What is the hippocampus up to when we deal with overlapping memories? Find out in our latest paper, now published in eLife. Wonderful stuff led by Casper Kerrén and Maria Wimber.

19th July 2022: We are delighted to start recruiting for an experiment that aims to boost the amount of information people can learn and recall from memory. If you are in the Birmingham area, aged between 18 and 40 years, and wish to take part, please send me an e-mail at b.griffiths.1 [at] bham.ac.uk.

29th June 2022: Our latest paper exploring the rhythmic interactions between the thalamus and cortex during visual perception is now published in Nature Communications. Read on here.

11th May 2022: Looking forward to getting back to in-person conferences this month. At both ICON (Helsinki, Finland) and BACN (Birmingham, UK), I'll be discussing two exciting new projects: one probing the corticothalamic underpinnings of visual detection, and another asking how the human brain uses head direction signals to facilitate "real-world" navigation. Hope to see you all there!

9th May 2022: Hippocampal theta oscillations as a means to resolve conflict between overlapping memories? The latest preprint led by Casper Kerrén and Maria Wimber is now available on bioRxiv. I'm honoured to have been a part of it. Grab your copy here.

1st April 2022: Ecstatic to start my new post as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Centre for Human Brain Health, University of Birmingham UK. Watch this space for exciting new work looking at the role of gamma oscillations in human memory!

7th March 2022: Interested to learn how our eyes influence EEG recordings? We dive into this topic in a new pre-print, check it out here.

8th February 2022: Our latest preprint looking into the role of thalamocortical interactions in visual perception is now available on bioRxiv, get it here.

2021

6th August 2021: Happy to announce that our latest paper on the oscillatory correlates of episodic memory has been published in NeuroImage, read all about it here.