Eitan Schechtman

Eitan is a postdoctoral fellow studying memory and sleep in Dr. Ken Paller's Cognitive Neuroscience lab at Northwestern University. I graduated from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem with a BA in Psychology and a MSc and PhD in Neural Computation.

Research interests:

In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important a function as recollecting.

                                 - William James

The capacity and mechanisms of memory-enhancing sleep manipulations

• I use neuroimaging combined with unobtrusive cuing during sleep to examine:
  • The capacity to reactivate multiple memories during sleep.
  • The role of context in sleep-related memory reactivation.
  • The dynamic interaction between multiple reactivated memories.
  • The implications these issues have on the neural mechanisms involved in sleep-related memory reactivation.

Memory Deterioration over Sleep

• Using these same techniques, I address the following questions:
  • Do some memories deteriorate over sleep?
  • What are the determining factors as to which memories weaken over sleep?
  • Is there a tradeoff between memories enhanced and weakened over sleep?
  • Can sleep be manipulated to selectively facilitate memory deterioration?
  • If so, can these methods be used to enhance or accelerate treatments for anxiety disorders or post-traumatic disorder?

Publications (Manuscripts)

Schechtman E., Laufer O. & Paz R. (2010). Negative valence widens generalization of learning. Journal of Neuroscience , 30(31): 10460-10464.

Kopel H., Schechtman E., Groysman M. & Mizrahi A. (2012). Enhanced synaptic integration of olfactory adult-born neurons in lactating mothers following parturition. Journal of Neuroscience, 32(22): 7519-7527.

Schechtman E., Shrem T. & Deouell L.Y. (2012). Spatial localization of auditory stimuli in early auditory processing is based on both head-independent and head-centered coordinate systems. Journal of Neuroscience, 32(39): 13501-9.

Schechtman E., Adler A., Deffains M., Gabbay H., Katabi S., Mizrahi A. & Bergman H. (2015). Coinciding decreases in discharge rate suggest that spontaneous pauses in firing of external pallidum neurons are network driven. Journal of Neuroscience, 35(17): 6744-6751.

Noblejas M.I., Schechtman E., Adler A., Joshua M., Katabi S. & Bergman H. (2015). Hold your pauses: External globus pallidus neurons respond to conditioned stimulus onset. European Journal of Neuroscience, 42(7): 2415-2425.

Schechtman E., Noblejas M.I., Mizrahi A., Dauber, O. & Bergman H. (2016). Pallidal spiking activity reflects learning dynamics and predicts performance. PNAS, 113(41): E6281-E6289.

Slovik M., Rosin B., Moshel S., Mitelman R., Schechtman E., Eitan R., Raz A. & Bergman H. (2017). Ketamine induced converged synchronous gamma oscillations in the cortico-basal ganglia network of non-human primates. Journal of Neurophysiology, 118(2): 917-931.

Vargas I.M., Schechtman E. & Paller K.A. (2019). Targeted memory reactivation during sleep to strengthen memory for arbitrary pairings. Neuropsychologia, 124: 144-150.

Schechtman E., Witkowski S., Lampe A., Wilson B.J., Paller K.A. (2020). Targeted memory reactivation during sleep boosts intentional forgetting of spatial locations. Scientific Reports, 10(1): 2327.

Witkowski S., Schechtman E., Paller K.A. (2020). Examining sleep’s role in memory generalization and specificity through the lens of targeted memory reactivation. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 33: 86-91.

Schechtman E., Antony J.W., Lampe A., Wilson B.J., Norman K.A., Paller K.A. (2021) . Multiple memories can be simultaneously reactivated during sleep as effectively as a single memory. Communications Biology 4 ,25.

Paller K.A., Creery J.D., Schechtman E. (2021). Memory and sleep: How sleep cognition can change the waking mind for the better. Annual Review of Psychology, 72: 123-150.

Schechtman E., Lampe A., Wilson B.J., Kwon E., Anderson M.C., Paller K.A. (2021). Sleep reactivation did not boost memory suppression-induced forgetting. Scientific Reports, 11: 1383.

Schechtman E., Stickgold R., Paller K.A. (in press). Sleep and Memory. In Mike Kahana & Anthony Wagner (Eds.), Handbook on Human Memory, Oxford University Press.