Brock Kirwan

Brock Kirwarn is a professor of Psychology at BYU. He earned his BS in Psychology and Philosophy from University of Utah in 2001, his MA in Psychology from Johns Hopkins University in 2004, and his PhD in Psychological and Brain Sciences from Johns Hopkins University in 2006.

Dr. Kirwan studies the brain mechanisms that allow people to form and retain memories of events. This includes big events, like your wedding or your sixth birthday, as well as more mundane information, like where you parked your car or what the word “doughnut” means. One question that occupies much of Dr. Kirwan’s time is this: What information will we forget, and why? To address this and other questions, Dr. Kirwan and his students use a number of methods, including neuropsychological studies with memory-impaired patients, behavioral studies with healthy adults, and functional neuroimaging (fMRI) experiments. Their fMRI experiments are conducted at the new MRI Research Facility on BYU campus.