Effects of Resting State on Perceptual Learning

DEDICATION ~~~ This work is dedicated to my brother Stephen Alwin (1986-2010) who lives on in reactivations of networks in my brain. ~~~ iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the following people for their support and influence over the years: A doctoral program requires patient family members and for that I'm very thankful for the patience and support of my husband David Eagleman. I'm also thankful for the support and encouragement from my mother, Susan Alwin-Popp, my stepfather, Thomas Popp, my father, Steven Alwin, my stepmother Shelley Alwin, and the rest of my large family. I'm very fortunate to be surrounded by loving, encouraging people. It is doubtful that I would be able to do half of what I do without them. I'd also like to thank my son Ari, for being the kind of baby content to listen to science papers as bedtime stories. I'm grateful for the people I've shared lab space with for these past 7 years. I'd like to thank Diego Gutnisky for the long lectures and drawings of mathematics equations during my first few years. Thank you also for continuing to be a close friend and mentor. Thank you Bryan Hansen for spending time teaching me how to work with all of the equipment in the lab and for having to rerun your own experiments to make up for things I'd break. I'd also like to thank Marcello Mulas for the incredible collaboration we had collecting and analyzing data for the resting state projects. Thank you to Jose Fernandez-Leon for the collaboration with the analysis and discussion of the extended reactivation project presented in this thesis. Having someone push me to defend what I do, has helped me become a better scientist and thinker. Thank you to Mircea Chelaru for thoughtful discussions on much of the work that is presented here. I'd also like to thank everyone Ming Hu for their thoughtful input and for making the lab a pleasant place to come day in and day out. Thank you to my current supervisory committee members: Drs. also like to thank previous faculty members who have served on my committees in the past: Drs. Neal Waxham, Ruth Heidelberger, and Pramod Dash. I'd like to thank Drs. Anthony Wright and Daniel Felleman for guiding me through rotation experiments early on in their laboratories before I joined Valentin's lab. I'd also like to thank my undergraduate …