This image superimposes hippocampal regional field capacities on train tracks managed by a switch that is overlaid by a dentate spike colored yellow. Railway tracks supply various paths to unique locations, like various hippocampal details processing modes can make it possible for distinct memory encoding and recollection details processing functions. Credit: Andr é Fenton, New York University
A group of researchers has actually discovered a system in the brain utilized in the processing of details and in the saving of memories– similar to how railway changes control a train’s location. The findings use brand-new insights into how the brain functions.
“Researchers have sought to identify neural circuits that have specialized functions, but there are simply too many tasks the brain performs for each circuit to have its own purpose,” discusses Andr é Fenton, a teacher of neural science at New York University and the senior author of the research study, which appears in the journal Cell Reports “Our results reveal how the same circuit takes on more than one function. The brain diverts ‘trains’ of neural activity from encoding our experiences to recalling them, showing that the same circuits have a role in both information processing and in memory.”
This freshly found vibrant demonstrate how the brain operates more effectively than formerly understood.
“When the same circuit performs more than one function, synergistic, creative, and economic interactions become possible,” Fenton includes.
To check out the function of brain circuits, the scientists took a look at the hippocampus– a brain structure long understood to play a substantial function in memory– in mice. They examined how the mouse hippocampus changes from encoding the existing place to remembering a remote place. Here, mice browsed a surface area and got a moderate shock if they touched particular locations, triggering the encoding of details. When the mice consequently went back to this surface area, they prevented the location where they ‘d formerly gotten the shock– proof that memory affected their motion.
The analysis of neural activity exposed a changing in the hippocampus. Specifically, the researchers discovered that a particular kind of activity pattern in the population of nerve cells referred to as a dentate spike, which stems from the median entorhinal cortex (DS M), served to collaborate modifications in brain function.
“Railway switches control each train’s destination, whereas dentate spikes switch hippocampus information processing from encoding to recollection,” observesFenton “Like a railway switch diverts a train, this dentate spike event diverts thoughts from the present to the past.”
Reference: “Dentate spikes and external control of hippocampal function” by Dino Dvorak, Ain Chung, Eun Hye Park and Andr é Antonio Fenton, 4 August 2021, Cell Reports
DOI: 10.1016/ j.celrep.2021109497
This research study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (R01 NS105472 and R01 MH099128).
