http://www.mdlinx.com/internal-medicine/newsl-article.cfm/5344414/ZZF307965849E94474BB34FC062CEC0F93/?
UC San Diego Health System, 06/17/2014
Confirming what neurocomputational theorists have long suspected,
researchers at the Dignity Health Barrow Neurological Institute in
Phoenix, Ariz. and University of California, San Diego School of
Medicine report that the human brain locks down episodic memories in the
hippocampus, committing each recollection to a distinct, distributed
fraction of individual cells. The findings, published in the June 16
Early Edition of PNAS, further illuminate the neural basis of human
memory and may, ultimately, shed light on new treatments for diseases
and conditions that adversely affect it, such as Alzheimer’s disease and
epilepsy. “To really understand how the brain represents memory, we
must understand how memory is represented by the fundamental
computational units of the brain – single neurons – and their networks,”
said Peter N. Steinmetz, MD, PhD, program director of neuroengineering
at Barrow and senior author of the study. “Knowing the mechanism of
memory storage and retrieval is a critical step in understanding how to
better treat the dementing illnesses affecting our growing elderly
population.”
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