Thanks to our memory, we can learn from the past and react appropriately to new situations. Our memory is therefore based on a certain stability and dynamism. However, the exact neural mechanisms behind this have remained a mystery. But thanks to recent research in the hippocampus of mice, we are now beginning to gain deeper insights. According to this research, the brain creates three copies for a single memory.
What we already knew: When we remember, i.e., retrieve certain memory contents, the same neuronal patterns are activated that were active during encoding. In particular, the focus was on discrete populations of neurons that emerge at different points in embryonic development-and neurons of the same age have similar properties. The researchers subjected mice to a conditioning paradigm in which the animals learned to associate an initially neutral event with a fearful stimulus. The researchers used calcium imaging to measure cell signals and optogenetic methods to manipulate cell activity.
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