Brain Scans Can Read Memories


Humans create memories of locations in physical or virtual space as they move around - and it all shows up on brain scans.


Researchers tracked brain activity related to "spatial memory" as volunteers moved about inside a virtual reality setup. Their new study challenges previous scientific thinking by showing that memories are recorded in regular patterns.


"Surprisingly, just by looking at the brain data we could predict exactly where they were in the virtual reality environment," said Eleanor Maguire, a neuroscientist at the University College London in the U.K. "In other words, we could 'read' their spatial memories."


Maguire and her colleagues focused on the hippocampus, or a small part of the brain that deals with navigation, memory recall and imagining future events. Neurons known as "place cells" activate in the hippocampus and inform people of where they are as they move around.


The researchers used an fMRI scanner to detect blood flow changes in the brain, and study the activity of the place cells as a volunteer controlled movement inside the virtual environment. They then ran the results through a computer algorithm developed by Demis Hassabis, another neuroscientist at University College London.


Earlier studies with rats had also focused on the hippocampus and measured activity at the level of dozens of neurons at most. But that research had suggested that the brain did not record memory in any sort of regular pattern - a trend that this latest study may overturn. Maguire and Hassabis examined thousands of neurons as opposed to just dozens, which allowed them to pick out broader patterns.


"By looking at activity over tens of thousands of neurons, we can see that there must be a functional structure - a pattern - to how these memories are encoded," Maguire said. "Otherwise, our experiment simply would not have been possible to do."


Mind-reading research has grown increasingly sophisticated over the years. Another recent study predicted people's preference for one of two drinks with 80 percent accuracy. And earlier findings showed that people's brains reflect abnormal activity up to half a minute before making errors.


The latest findings on memory could lead to many more studies that examine how actual memories end up encoded across our brain cells, Maguire said. She and Hassabis want to look beyond spatial memories to see if brain scans can pick up patterns in our memories of the past, as well as visions of the future. Such work could also have clinical implications for understanding diseases that attack memory.


"Understanding how we as humans record our memories is critical to helping us learn how information is processed in the hippocampus and how our memories are eroded by diseases such as Alzheimer's," added Demis Hassabis.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090313/sc_livescience/brainscanscanreadmemories

oh dear.

they will find a vast room of nothing if they scan me.

It is amazing working with Elderley Alzeimers/Dementia patients, and how their short term memory is 'out of this world', yet talk about childhoods to them and their memory is strong, like it was only yesterday, and can remember names, places, what they did etc...The brain is an incredible organ...

Kind of proves that memories aren't something that fade over time like color on paper in the sun. They are something that can be read and decrypted.

I need them to run a Defrag on my brain...clean out the trash and organize the remaining 9% to function at optimal capacity.

hee hee *snort*

That's for sure...

How so very true this is for when my Aunt before she passed away was diagnosed with Alzheimer we were all together sad to say for one of my uncles funeral's but I was riding in the vehicle with my aunt and when we all get together the talk always reverts back to the time when granny was still with us all. Even though a few times during the day my aunt's attention seem to fade at times when others were talking about what they have been doing as if she was hearing it for the first time. But as soon as we started talking about granny her eyes light up and she was telling stories right along with everyone else as we talked about our memories of granny. It was a great day just to see her memories of the past were still there and very vivid.