We Now Know More About How We Create New Memories
The brain is the organ responsible for two fundamental faculties: thinking and acting. Both require an ability to learn (store) and remember (retrieve) acquired information for their activation. The great advances in neuroscience in recent years have made it possible to understand some of the mechanisms that work when these abilities kick in, paying special attention to those areas that activate when we generate new memories.
Science fiction on the one hand and media pressure on the other have perpetuated, in the collective unconscious, some errors, myths or not very precise points of view on our central nervous system: we have come to accept that the brain is like a computer or it is a plastic structure with limitless capabilities. In the news, we know that’s not true at all because we’ve learned more about how these little magical cells called neurons are created and communicated.
Tell yourself that emotions are closely linked to memory. Much research indicates that events with emotional content, positive or negative, are remembered much more than those that are not coded to any emotion. In this sense, emotional memory is the result of the generation of memories which has been accompanied by activating factors, through which the latter are more easily fixed.
Memories need various particular psychological and neurobiological processes which appear to be indispensable and necessary for the formation of new memories and, by extension, of memory. Ultimately, the memory trace is the result of the storage of information accompanied by alarm or warning factors through which our memories are fixed.
Where are the memories kept?
Short-term and long-term memories are generated simultaneously and are stored in the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, respectively. Thus, the area of the brain in which short-term memories are stored has already been identified, but the process of long-term memorization has not. However, a study by researchers at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memorization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge (USA) succeeded, for the first time, in describing the location. and how long-term memories are created.
As Mark Morrissey, co-author of the research, points out, memories form in parallel and then take different paths: those of the prefrontal cortex strengthen and those of the hippocampus weaken (unless there is a revision).
The novelty of this study lies in the demonstration that the communication between the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus is very important. If the circuit that connects the two regions of the brain were to interrupt, the engrams in the cortex would not develop properly. Or, to put it in different terms, long-term memories wouldn’t store.
Memories are absolutely essential for our development and survival. And even more so in the case of negative memories which, in their alarm form, warn us of the risk we may run by repeating behavior that has caused us pain in the past. So, in order to keep us alive and make sense of suffering, the brain needs to store long-term memories.
Memories depend on our neurons
The results of Mark Morrissey’s study showed that memory neurons are located in three areas of the brain: in the hippocampus, the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, the latter being involved in memories associated with emotions. Ultimately, these results negate many previous theories about memory consolidation. It was previously established that short- and long-term memories do not form simultaneously in the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex but generate in the hippocampus and later transfer to the cerebral cortex.
Neurons, in practice, work on the basis of communication because the brain uses a low number of brain cells to remember something it has seen. This contradicts what had been thought until then: the brain uses a huge network of neurons to store memories. The study suggests that neurons act like thinking cells, capable of specializing in specific memories, previously selected by the brain.
This discovery could be used to “artificially” restore memory to people who have suffered brain damage or who are affected by diseases such as Alzheimer’s. At the same time, the results suggest the existence of a brain code that plays an important role in the knowledge of visual perception and in brain processes to build our abstract memory.
Outside the field of neurology, this discovery will undoubtedly contribute to the development of artificial intelligence and neural networks, by improving the architecture of a large number of technological devices in daily use that we use to save and process. informations.
Hippocampus, prefrontal cortex and tonsil
In the 1950s, we studied the case of patient Henry Molaison, who suffered damage to the hippocampus after an operation to control his epileptic episodes. After the latter, Molaison was unable to create new memories; however, he retained those dating from his pre-operation, which revealed the importance of the hippocampus in forming new long-term memories.
This case suggested that long-term episodic memories about specific events were stored in a location outside the hippocampus, and scientists consider this location to be the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for cognitive functions, such as planning or paying attention to something. This assumes that traditional theories of memory consolidation may not be accurate, although more studies are needed to determine whether memories are completely erased from cells in the hippocampus or whether the fact that we do not remember them. something is simply due to a problem in the recovery.
For its part, the amygdala also plays an important role in determining the structure with which we store new memories. The association of new memories with emotional states allows for a greater connection and fixation of the situations to be recalled. In other words, the amygdala is responsible for giving more or less visibility to a memory depending on the associated emotions. It also plays a role in determining which details of a memory will stay buried deeper and which will not.
The amygdala has a protective function and this explains why some people are very afraid of dogs (emotional memory) but do not remember the situation that caused this fear to arise (narrative memory). This is most likely due to the stress they went through in the past with these animals or the initial event was accompanied by other similar moments. This type of memory, emotional memory, is the one that allows us to remember what in our environment is associated with a dangerous or beneficial event.
The activation of the amygdala in the face of stimuli that provoke fear strengthens the trace of memories, makes it deep. That is, we remember things better that happen to us when intense emotions arise at the same time; emotional activation is what makes it easier to consolidate memories.
Here we have seen some of the most important discoveries that have been made in recent years about memory and the creation of new memories. Despite everything, the answers that researchers are currently defending are nothing less than closed answers. Likewise, and given that these are recent findings, we haven’t made the most of them to improve the lives of those people with memory problems.
Our thoughts What is a memory?
