海角禁区

Cognitive neuroscience of aging: Focus on investigating how brain iron accumulation during normal aging affects cognitive ability, with an initial focus on working memory. Working memory refers to the cognitive capacity to temporarily hold and manipulate information, such as remembering a phone number while finding a pen or holding an address in mind while listening to directions. My research has demonstrated that brain iron, which accumulates with age, has a detrimental effect on working memory. Specifically, I showed that excess brain iron disrupts the white-matter connections among brain regions that support working memory (Zachariou et al., 2023). This disruption hampers communication between these regions, leading to declines in working memory performance (Zachariou et al., 2020). Importantly, my research has also identified strategies to mitigate the negative effects of brain iron on cognition. In subsequent studies, I found that older adults with high dietary intake of specific nutrients鈥攕uch as vitamin E, lysine, DHA omega-3, and LA omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs)鈥攈ad lower brain iron levels and better working memory performance than expected for their age. These nutrients, found in foods like nuts, soybeans, olive oil, and fish, appear to offer protection against brain iron accumulation and associated cognitive decline (Zachariou et al., 2021, 2025). The healthy dietary intake aspect of my work has garnered attention from the media, underscoring its broad scientific and public health relevance. Outlets such as Technology Networks: Applied Sciences and Newswise.com reported on my findings regarding nutrients that combat iron buildup in the aging brain. Additionally, platforms including News-Medical.net and HealthDay highlighted how dietary choices can promote brain health and preserve cognitive ability, further amplifying the impact of my research. Finally, I developed and released an open-source, freely available software package that converts the analyses and statistical tools I used in these studies into a resource for other researchers and laboratories investigating brain iron and its effects (Zachariou et al., 2022). By providing this resource, I aim to support broader progress in the field and facilitate new discoveries that advance our understanding of aging and cognitive health.

Cognitive neuroscience of shape and location perception: focus on how we perceive and identify the shape of objects and how we determine their physical, spatial location in the world. The human visual system processes information from complex visual scenes rapidly through a 'divide and conquer' strategy: one group of brain regions, primarily along the inferior temporal cortex or ventral visual pathway, processes information about the shape and identity of objects, while another group of brain regions, located in the posterior parietal cortex or dorsal visual pathway, processes information about their spatial location. Traditionally, these two visual pathways were thought to be functionally segregated and independent. The ventral pathway was believed to process only the shape and identity of objects, whereas the dorsal pathway was thought to focus exclusively on spatial location. However, through a series of studies published between 2011 and 2018, I demonstrated that this strict functional segregation is not as clear-cut as previously proposed. My research revealed that the dorsal visual pathway, which primarily processes spatial location, also contributes to shape perception鈥攊ncluding the perception of faces, a unique category of objects previously believed to be processed exclusively by the ventral visual pathway. This body of work (Zachariou et al., 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018) was among the first and most compelling to challenge the long-held view of strict segregation between the ventral and dorsal visual pathways. It provided robust evidence supporting the idea that these pathways are not entirely independent but instead interact to support visual perception.