2024-08-17 16:28:02
The human brain is still a mystery to science in many areas. Swiss researchers have now deciphered another mechanism.
Can you imagine having your childhood memories stored in your head not just once, but three times? This idea may sound strange at first, but new research suggests that our memory formation is actually a complex process.
Instead of storing memories as simple backups – comparable to a backup on a computer – our brain creates several different copies of a single memory. This is what researchers at the University of Basel are currently reporting. These copies are initially identical, but change and develop in very different ways over time. Some are even deleted again over time.
Specifically, the scientists discovered that in the hippocampus, a brain region responsible for learning, a single event is stored in parallel in at least three different groups of neurons. These neurons differ primarily in terms of their age: the oldest neurons were formed early in embryonic development, while the youngest were formed much later. According to researchers, the neurons that were formed early store an event for the long term and their memory copy strengthens over time.
The exact opposite happens with late-developing neurons: their memory copy is initially very strong, but fades over time so that the brain can no longer access it after a while. There is also a third group of neurons whose created copy is almost consistently stable.
The interesting thing is that the three different memory copies differ in how easily they can be changed and adapted to new experiences in the environment. Memories that are only stored for a short time by the late neurons are very malleable and can be rewritten. So when we think about an experience again shortly after it happened, the late neurons become active and integrate new information into the original memory. If, on the other hand, we only remember this event after a long time, the early neurons call up their memory copy, which is then hardly changeable.
Our brain therefore has to cope with two opposing tasks: “Remembering is an enormous challenge and an impressive feat for the brain. On the one hand, it has to remember past events so that we can find our way in the world we live in. On the other hand, it has to adapt the memories to the changes around us so that we can make the right decisions,” concluded study leader Prof. Flavio Donato in a university press release.
The Swiss researchers conducted their studies on the brains of mice. However, they are convinced that memory formation in humans works the same way, or at least in a very similar way.