Neuroscience
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 Is Talking to Itself
By NICHOLAS WADE
The New York Times
December 18, 2006
New recordings of electrical activity in the brain may explain a major part of its function, including how it consolidates daily memories, why it needs to dream and how it constructs models of the world to guide behavior.
The recordings capture dialogue between the hippocampus, where initial memories of the day’s events are formed, and the neocortex, the sheet of neurons on the outer surface of the brain that mediates conscious thought and contains long-term memories.
Such a dialogue had been thought to exist, but no one had been able to eavesdrop on it successfully. The new insight has emerged from recordings of rat brains but is likely to occur in much the same way in the human brain, which has analogous structures and the same basic principles of operation.
The finding, reported on the Web site of the journal Nature Neuroscience by Daoyun Ji and Matthew A. Wilson, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, showed that during nondreaming sleep, the neurons of both the hippocampus and the neocortex replayed memories — in repeated simultaneous bursts of electrical activity — of a task the rat learned the previous day.
[ ... Read the full article ... ]
Here is the Nature Neuroscience abstract: link
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Neuroscience
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 Is Talking to Itself
By NICHOLAS WADE
The New York Times
December 18, 2006
New recordings of electrical activity in the brain may explain a major part of its function, including how it consolidates daily memories, why it needs to dream and how it constructs models of the world to guide behavior.
The recordings capture dialogue between the hippocampus, where initial memories of the day’s events are formed, and the neocortex, the sheet of neurons on the outer surface of the brain that mediates conscious thought and contains long-term memories.
Such a dialogue had been thought to exist, but no one had been able to eavesdrop on it successfully. The new insight has emerged from recordings of rat brains but is likely to occur in much the same way in the human brain, which has analogous structures and the same basic principles of operation.
The finding, reported on the Web site of the journal Nature Neuroscience by Daoyun Ji and Matthew A. Wilson, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, showed that during nondreaming sleep, the neurons of both the hippocampus and the neocortex replayed memories — in repeated simultaneous bursts of electrical activity — of a task the rat learned the previous day.
[ ... Read the full article ... ]
Here is the Nature Neuroscience abstract: link
- Students: It's Time To Ditch The Pre-exam All-nighter
Lack of sleep impairs the human brain's ability to store new information in memory, researchers have found. Past research has already shown that sleep is vital for consolidating recently-learned material but now Matthew Walker and colleagues have...
- 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...
- 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...
- Memories And Memories
From a press release earlier today from Toronto's Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care:What happens in the brain when we remember our own past? Toronto, CANADA --Researchers are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to probe brain activity...
- 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...