memory tagged posts

The Crystallization of Memory: Study reveals how Practice forms New Memory Pathways in the Brain

Brain made from wooden puzzles.
Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

A new study led by UCLA Health has shown that repetitive practice not only is helpful in improving skills but also leads to profound changes in the brain’s memory pathways.

The research, published in the journal Nature and co-led by Rockefeller University, sought to unravel how the brain’s ability to retain and process information, known as working memory, improves through training.

To test this, researchers tasked mice with identifying and recalling a sequence of odors over the course of two weeks. Researchers then tracked neural activity in the animals as they practiced the task by using a novel, custom-built microscope to image cellular activity in up to 73,000 neurons simultaneously throughout the cortex.

The study revealed a transformation...

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Study finds Protein p53 Regulates Learning, Memory and Sociability in Mice

Protein p53 regulates learning, memory, sociability in mice
Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology led by Professor Nien-Pei Tsai (right) and Kwan Young Lee have established the protein p53 as critical for regulating sociability, repetitive behavior, and hippocampus-related learning and memory in mice, illuminating the relationship between the protein-coding gene TP53 and neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders like autism spectrum disorder. Credit: University of Illinois/L. Brian Stauffer

Researchers have established the protein p53 as critical for regulating sociability, repetitive behavior, and hippocampus-related learning and memory in mice, illuminating the relationship between the protein-coding gene TP53 and neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders like ...

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New Study Links Brain Waves directly to Memory

brain wave
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Neurons produce rhythmic patterns of electrical activity in the brain. One of the unsettled questions in the field of neuroscience is what primarily drives these rhythmic signals, called oscillations. University of Arizona researchers have found that simply remembering events can trigger them, even more so than when people are experiencing the actual event.

The researchers, whose findings are published in the journal Neuron, specifically focused on what are known as theta oscillations, which emerge in the brain’s hippocampus region during activities like exploration, navigation and sleep. The hippocampus plays a crucial role in the brain’s ability to remember the past.

Prior to this study, it was believed that the external environment played a mo...

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Atom-thin Walls could Smash Size, Memory Barriers in Next-gen Devices

Evgeny Tsymbal
Nebraska’s Evgeny Tsymbal and an international team have demonstrated how to construct, control and explain nanoscopic walls that could yield multiple technological benefits. Craig Chandler | University Communication and Marketing

Nanomaterial feature could help electronic circuits adopt benefits of human memory. For all of the unparalleled, parallel-processing, still-indistinguishable-from-magic wizardry packed into the three pounds of the adult human brain, it obeys the same rule as the other living tissue it controls: Oxygen is a must.

So it was with a touch of irony that Evgeny Tsymbal offered his explanation for a technological wonder — movable, data-covered walls mere atoms wide — that may eventually help computers behave more like a brain.

“There was unambiguous evidence...

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