When neurons are activated in the hippocampus, not all are going to be firing at once.
Think of a time when you had two different but similar experiences in a short period. Maybe you attended two holiday parties in the same week or gave two presentations at work. Shortly afterward, you may find yourself confusing the two, but as time goes on that confusion recedes and you are better able to differentiate between these different experiences.
New research published in Nature Neuroscience reveals that this process occurs on a cellular level, findings that are critical to the understanding and treatment of memory disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Dynamic engrams store memories
The research focuses on engrams, which are neuronal cells in the brain that store memory information. “Engrams are the neurons that are reactivated to support memory recall,” says Dheeraj S. Roy, Ph.D., one of the paper’s senior authors and an assistant professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo. “When engrams are disrupted, you get amnesia.”
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