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05 Sep 2008
The nerve cells concerned with the creation of memories are also involved in replaying them, a new study has suggested.
Published in the online edition of the journal Science, the research was carried out by scientists at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), USA.
The study provides a new insight into the way complex memories are laid down in a single nerve cell and also how communication patterns created during the formation of memories are maintained when they are recalled by a person.
A total of 13 volunteers - epilepsy sufferers who had therapeutic electrodes implanted in their brains - were shown a number of clips from shows such as The Simpsons.
It was found that distinct areas of the brain fired in distinctive repeatable patterns which were different for each clip, web resource Scientific American notes.
Senior study author Itzhak Fried, director of the UCLA health system's epilepsy surgery programme, stats that the same area that activated during the original viewing of the clip also became active during the recall.
"The very neuron that was selectively active during the encoding, during the original viewing, suddenly came to life. It essentially replayed that memory by firing," he adds.
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