Scientists Finally Discover How Memories are Formed

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Ever wonder how the brain is able to recall all the fondest memories of an individual throughout the duration of his life? A team of neuroscientists is claiming that they have finally discovered how memories are formed, in a study published in the journal Neuron.

According to Medical News Today, researchers from the the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in California have teamed up to study and understand how memories are made. Dr. Matias Ison, Prof. Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, and Dr. Itzhak Fried have published the results of their 5-year experiment on the role of the medial temporal lobe to the formation of memories.

This was initially tested on animals. However, researchers felt that they needed to escalate the study further, due to the limited capacity of animal testing and decided to test it on humans.

Reuters reports that the experiment tested 14 individuals suffering from severe epilepsy. Electrodes were implanted on their brains to check where seizures usually come from. The electrodes also helped the researchers identify the neurons where memories are concealed.

The experiment started with the subjects being shown different pictures of celebrities and iconic places. Researchers identified individual neurons that reacted to the pictures of celebrities like Julia Roberts, but not to places like the Eiffel Tower. Later, researchers showed a different set of pictures, this time placing Julia Roberts at the Eiffel Tower. Once the participants saw the pictures, they were able to associate the person at that place immediately.

Science Daily reports that the most astonishing finding was how individual neutrons used associations between people and places, with changes exhibiting just after one instance, according to Dr. Ison. He adds that the results also link association with the mechanism of episodic memory formation, instilling memories in the brain.

Dr. Fried explains that understanding the formation of episodic memory may play a significant clinical role in dealing with Alzheimer's Disease and other neurological disorders.

Researchers are planning to investigate why related concepts are retained as  long-term memories while others are discarded. They also want to see if forgotten memories can be retrieved through the use of brain stimulation.