Memory Elements: Switching Memories

Scientists have learned not only disrupt the brain mechanisms of memory, but also to restore them.

Interesting experiments have put employees in California professor Theodore Berger. The rats had to choose one of two levers, pressing on which made them award. It is clear that a fairly intelligent animal cope with the problem easily and quickly memorize a useful lever.

But with all this in the rat brain electrodes were introduced – or more precisely, in the hippocampus, a small but extremely important part of participating in the formation mechanisms of emotion and memory. Previous studies have shown that when “switched on” long-term memory between the two regions in the hippocampus, CA1 and CA3 mentioned, there is an intensive exchange of signals. It is this process and translates information from short-term memory into long-term.

So the rats have already been successfully master the correct choice lever chemically blocked the normal process of exchange of signals between CA3 and CA1. Animals that have seemingly memorized the right lever, instantly forgot about it and behaved as if no such information in their long-term memory does not. They are not “lost mind” completely – in the words of Theodore Berger, the rat pressed the first logical one lever, then the second (or vice versa), they realized that the press would bring them rewards. But then, what kind of leverage they clicked recently completely fell out of their minds.

But the chief was the next step the researchers. They used an electronic system that a particular algorithm counted the normal electrical activity in CA1 and CA3 in the process of remembering – and filed the necessary signals to the electrodes. Memory in rats immediately restored and operated as usual. If a similar device with the electrodes used in healthy rats with intact hippocampus, the memory is significantly enhanced.

Scientists plan to conduct similar experiments on monkeys – their purpose is not purely academic, but a medical one. The authors hope that these electronic systems (of course, significantly upgraded and miniaturized) will one day return the memory for some people.