The findings are reported in the on-line edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"When you need to remember people you've just met at a meeting, the brain probably doesn't memorize each person's facial features to help you identify them later," says Sam Deadwyler, Ph.D., a Wake Forest neuroscientist and study investigator. "Instead, it records vital information, such as their hairstyle, height, or age, all classifications that we are familiar with from meeting people in general. Our research suggests how the brain might do this, which could lead to ways to improve memory in humans."
The researchers found that when monkeys were taught to remember computer clip art pictures, their brains reduced the level of detail by sorting the pictures into categories for recall, such as images that contained "people," "buildings," "flowers," and "animals." The categorizing cells were found in the hippocampus, an area of the brain that processes sensory information into memory. It is essential for remembering all things including facts, places, or people, and is severely affected in Alzheimer's disease.
"One of the intriguing questions is how information is processed by the hippocampus to retain and retrieve memories," said Robert Hampson, Ph.D., co-investigator. "The identification of these cells in monkeys provides evidence that information can be remembered more effectively by separating it into categories. It is likely that humans use a similar process."
The researchers measured individual cell activity in the hippocampus while the monkeys performed a video-game-like memory task. Each monkey w
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Contact: Karen Richardson
krchrdsn@wfubmc.edu
336-716-4587
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center
26-Feb-2004