Neuroscience
From today's New York Times:
January 23, 2007
Amnesiacs May Be Cut Off From Past and Future Alike
By BENEDICT CAREY
The New York Times
In the movies amnesia is bizarre, and thrilling. The star is usually a former assassin or government agent whose future depends on retrieving the bloody, jigsaw fragments that restore identity and explain the past.
Yet in the real world, people with amnesia live in a mental universe at least as strange as fiction: new research suggests that they are marooned in the present, as helpless at imagining future experiences as they are at retrieving old ones.
The new study, reported last week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first rigorous test of how brain-injured people with amnesia mentally inhabit imaginary scenes. The results suggest that to the brain, remembered experience and imagined experience are reflections from the same mirror, rich inner worlds animated by almost identical neural networks.
The findings provide a glimpse into what it might mean to truly live in the moment. And they feed a continuing debate about memory. Some researchers say that the brain region central to forming new memories — the hippocampus, a sliver of tissue deep in the brain where the day’s memories are registered — is not necessary for retrieving those experiences, once they have been consolidated elsewhere in the brain.
Others, including the authors of the new study, contend that the hippocampus in fact provides the stage on which inner mental dramas are set. Without its help only the props remain — loose facts, people’s names, snippets from favorite songs: the players without the play.
[ ... read the full article ... ]
- How Thinking About The Future Can Cause Us To Forget The Past
We routinely envision future events, whether that be fantasising about next month’s beach retreat, or planning whether to hit the gym this afternoon before or after picking up the dry cleaning. New research supports the idea that we are able to conjure...
- The Fine Points Of Forgetfulness
From today's New York Times: Forgetting May Be Part of the Process of Remembering By BENEDICT CAREY June 5, 2007 Whether drawing a mental blank on a new A.T.M. password, a favorite recipe or an old boyfriend, people have ample opportunity every day...
- Olfaction, Memory, And Sleep
From today's New York Times: Scent Activates Memory During Sleep, Study Says By BENEDICT CAREY The New York Times Published: March 8, 2007 Scientists studying how sleep affects memory have found that the whiff of a familiar scent can help a slumbering...
- Your Busy Brain, While You Sleep: Way Better Than Tivo!
This is one of the more interesting research studies that I've read about over the past couple of months. Please open up the link to the full article to read all about it: From today's New York Times: In Memory-Bank ‘Dialogue,’ the Brain...
- Scents & Sleep
The New York Times article Study Uncovers Memory Aid: A Scent During Sleep says that smells may help us remember things better. They quote a study recently published in Science: "The smell of roses — delivered to people’s nostrils as they studied...
Neuroscience
Amnestic Syndromes: The Play's The Thing ...
From today's New York Times:
January 23, 2007
Amnesiacs May Be Cut Off From Past and Future Alike
By BENEDICT CAREY
The New York Times
In the movies amnesia is bizarre, and thrilling. The star is usually a former assassin or government agent whose future depends on retrieving the bloody, jigsaw fragments that restore identity and explain the past.
Yet in the real world, people with amnesia live in a mental universe at least as strange as fiction: new research suggests that they are marooned in the present, as helpless at imagining future experiences as they are at retrieving old ones.
The new study, reported last week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first rigorous test of how brain-injured people with amnesia mentally inhabit imaginary scenes. The results suggest that to the brain, remembered experience and imagined experience are reflections from the same mirror, rich inner worlds animated by almost identical neural networks.
The findings provide a glimpse into what it might mean to truly live in the moment. And they feed a continuing debate about memory. Some researchers say that the brain region central to forming new memories — the hippocampus, a sliver of tissue deep in the brain where the day’s memories are registered — is not necessary for retrieving those experiences, once they have been consolidated elsewhere in the brain.
Others, including the authors of the new study, contend that the hippocampus in fact provides the stage on which inner mental dramas are set. Without its help only the props remain — loose facts, people’s names, snippets from favorite songs: the players without the play.
[ ... read the full article ... ]
- How Thinking About The Future Can Cause Us To Forget The Past
We routinely envision future events, whether that be fantasising about next month’s beach retreat, or planning whether to hit the gym this afternoon before or after picking up the dry cleaning. New research supports the idea that we are able to conjure...
- The Fine Points Of Forgetfulness
From today's New York Times: Forgetting May Be Part of the Process of Remembering By BENEDICT CAREY June 5, 2007 Whether drawing a mental blank on a new A.T.M. password, a favorite recipe or an old boyfriend, people have ample opportunity every day...
- Olfaction, Memory, And Sleep
From today's New York Times: Scent Activates Memory During Sleep, Study Says By BENEDICT CAREY The New York Times Published: March 8, 2007 Scientists studying how sleep affects memory have found that the whiff of a familiar scent can help a slumbering...
- Your Busy Brain, While You Sleep: Way Better Than Tivo!
This is one of the more interesting research studies that I've read about over the past couple of months. Please open up the link to the full article to read all about it: From today's New York Times: In Memory-Bank ‘Dialogue,’ the Brain...
- Scents & Sleep
The New York Times article Study Uncovers Memory Aid: A Scent During Sleep says that smells may help us remember things better. They quote a study recently published in Science: "The smell of roses — delivered to people’s nostrils as they studied...