Remembering is like ‘Relieving’

September 19th, 2008

Ever wondered how memory is made? Well, for the brain, remembering is like relieving, a new study has suggested.

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Researchers have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a memory, thus revealing where in the brain a specific experience is stored and how the brain is able to recreate it.

“In a way, reliving past experience in our memory is the resurrection of neuronal activity from the past,” lead researcher Dr Itzhak Fried of California University said.

Dr Fried and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have based their findings on an analysis of the brains of 13 epilepsy patients being treated surgically at a medical centre in the US.

Surgeons had placed electrodes in the patients’ brains to locate the origin of their seizures before surgical treatment — standard procedure in such cases. Fried made use of the same electrodes to record neuron activity as memories were being formed.

In the study, the patients watched several video clips of short duration, including such things as landmarks and people, along with other clips of Jerry Seinfeld, Tom Cruise, Simpsons ’ character Homer Simpson and others.

Sources: The Times Of India