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Hang On To Your Memories, Scientists Discover Equations That Could Change Them
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Hang On To Your Memories, Scientists Discover Equations That Could Change Them

Source: dailymail.co.uk

Scientists have uncovered mathematical equations behind the way the brain forms – and even loses – memories.They claim their equations are the most accurate yet in describing how we recall events

Scientists have uncovered mathematical equations behind the way the brain forms – and even loses – memories.

They claim their equations are the most accurate yet in describing how we recall events.

The discovery, they say, could one day lead to techniques in which doctors are able to erase or change memories associated with traumatic events.

Scientists at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland took a look at how memories form through speciliased brain connections called synapses.

Synapses show a lot of plasticity, allowing neurons to change their communication speed and intensity - and change memories.

A research team led by Wolfram Gerstner focused on the formation of what are known as 'memory assemblies'.

These are networks of neurons, connected via synapses, which can store a particular segment of a memory.

When a memory is being recalled, its particular assemblies piece it together to produce a whole.


The discovery could one day lead to techniques in which doctors are able to erase or change memories associated with traumatic events

The team's simulations suggested that memory formation and recall follows a 'well-orchestrated combination'.

From their results, the scientists were able to derive a complex algorithm that they say is currently is the most accurate representation of this complex phenomenon.

The algorithm can be adapted to help develop tools that trigger new memories in the brain, or even erase old memories completely.

'If we can understand how synapses work together to forge or dismantle memory networks, we can advance fields such as cognition and psychotherapy,' says Gerstner.

The research follows a study in March, in which conscious memories were implanted into the minds of mice while they slept.

Scientists say the same technique could one day be used to change human memories, which could help people who replay traumatic events over and over in their minds.

The brain typically replays the day's activities when people or animals sleep, which allows it to reinforce and learn a new activity, for example.

Scientists from the Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution in Paris, France, used this replay process to create new memories in the brains of mice, while they slept.

Researchers monitored the activity of these cells when the mice explored an 'arena' using electrodes, isolating the cell that fired in a certain arena location.

While the mice slept, they monitored the creature's brain activity and when the specific place cell fired, an electrode stimulated the brain areas linked to reward.

When the mice woke up, they immediately scurried to the location that was linked to the rewarding feeling, showing that a new pleasant memory of the place had been formed by the scientists.

Bees Form False memories Like Humans

In the same way that humans sometimes remember things that didn't actually occur, researchers have found that bees also misremember.

It's the first time that false memories have been observed in non-human animals.

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) tested to see if bumblebees would confuse merged versions of patterns that had previously rewarded them with food, with the ones they had actually seen.

They found that if they'd previously been shown a flower with black rings and then a yellow one, that they would later seek food rewards from a flower with yellow rings on it.

This incorrect merging of long-term memories in bumblebees is similar to some types of misremembering information that have previously only been observed in humans.

The researchers think that such memory errors are probably common in animals whose lifestyle involves regularly juggling multiple memories.

Professor Lars Chittka, from QMUL's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, said: 'That people form false memories is well understood but it has never been seen in other animals before.

'There are a lot of similarities between our own memories and those of other animals.

'The more we know about the way that memory works in the animal kingdom the more we'll be able to understand our own memory and the problems we have with it.'

Source: dailymail.co.uk

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