Memories are made of this

Scientists unlock the ‘place’ of memory in the brain.

Doctors from UCLA and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have - for the first time - recorded the specific brain cells used in the calling up of memory.
 
The findings, reported in the online edition of the journal Science, recorded the activities of neurons in epilepsy patients undergoing surgical treatment, who had been previously fitted with brain electrodes to find the origins of their seizures.
 
The patients were shown video clips and later asked to recall them. In the act of both registering the memory and then in recalling, the same neurons were shown to fire up. It was later possible for the researchers to accurately deduce the memory purely by watching the neuron activity.
 
Furthermore, the neurons were shown to be acting as part of a larger ‘circuit’ of thousands of cells involved in the act of memory.
 
Commenting on the findings, Dr Itzhak Fried, senior author of the study and UCLA professor of neurosurgery, said: "In a way, reliving past experience in our memory is the resurrection of neuronal activity from the past." 

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