Summary: A recent study reveals how certain brain cells in the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus record information that aids in the formation of memories and future outcomes.
These neurons blaze in styles that reflect the sequence of events, and some even replay them after the event is over. This finding provides insight into how the mind integrates “what” and “when” information to create lasting memories.
Important Information:
- Time-related styles are stored in the brain and entorhinal brain.
- The mind replays function patterns during sleep, aiding memory formation.
- This finding may tell memory-enhancing neuro-prosthetic devices.
Origin: UCLA
One of the most important treasures in neuroscience has recently been solved by a groundbreaking research led by UCLA Health: how the human mind processes and interprets the flow of time and experience.
The , study, published in the journal , Nature, immediately recorded the activity of individual cells in people and found certain types of brain tissues fired in a way that generally mirrored the order and structure of a woman’s knowledge.
After the experience is over, the mind can quickly preview these special firing patterns while at rest, according to the researchers. Additionally, the mind can use these newly acquired patterns to prepare for incoming stimuli following that knowledge.
These findings provide the earliest empirical proof of how certain brain cells incorporate “what” and “when” info to remove and retain representations of events over time.
The study’s top publisher,  , Dr. Itzhak Fried, said the results may assist in the development of neuro-prosthetic devices to improve memory and other mental functions as well as have implications in unnatural intelligence’s understanding of cognition in the human brain.
For the human mind to form memory, forecast potential potential outcomes, and manual behaviors, Fried, director of seizures procedure at UCLA Health and professor of neurosurgery, psychiatry, and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said,” Recognizing patterns from experiences over time is crucial for the human brain to form memory, identify possible future outcomes, and manual behaviors.
However, how this process is carried out on a cellular level in the brain has remained unknowable up until now.
In previous research, including that led by Dr. Fried, used brain recordings and neuroimaging to demonstrate how the brain processes spatial navigation. These studies demonstrated that two brain regions, the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex, played significant roles in the development of both animal and human models. The two brain regions, both important in memory functions, work to interact to create a” cognitive map”.
The hippocampal neurons act as “place cells” that show when an animal is at a specific location, similar to an’ X’ on a map, while the entorhinal neurons act as “grid cells” to provide a metric of spatial distance. Fried’s team later discovered these cells in humans after first finding them in rodents.
Similar neural actions that are used to represent non-spatial experiences like time, sound frequency, and characteristics of objects have been found in additional studies. According to Fried and his colleagues,” concept cells” in the human hippocampus and entorhinal cortex respond to particular people, places, or distinct objects, and they appear to be fundamental to our capacity for memory.  ,
The UCLA study sought to examine how long events are remembered in the brains of 17 patients with intractable epilepsy who had previously had depth electrodes implanted in their brains for clinical treatment.
As part of a complex procedure that involved behavioral tasks, pattern recognition, and image sequencing, researchers captured the participants ‘ neural activity.
Participants first went through a preliminary screening section, in which roughly 120 images of people, animals, objects, and landmarks were repeatedly displayed to them on a computer for about 40 minutes.
The participants were given the task of determining whether the image represented a person or not. The images, of things like famous actors, musicians and places, were selected partly based on each participant’s preferences.
Following this, the participants engaged in a three-phase experiment where they would perform behavioral tasks in response to images that had been randomly displayed on various points of a pyramid-shaped graph. Six images were selected for each participant.
In the first phase, images were displayed in a pseudo-random order. The location on the pyramid graph was used to determine the order of the images in the next phase. The first phase had the same appearance as the final phase.
The participants were asked to perform a variety of behavioral tasks unrelated to the images ‘ placement on the pyramid graph while watching these images.
These tasks included figuring out whether the image displayed a male or a female character or whether a particular image was mirrored in comparison to the previous phase.
According to Fried and his colleagues ‘ analysis, the hippocampal-entorhinal neurons began to gradually alter and closely synchronize their activity with the pyramid graphs ‘ images.
According to Fried, these patterns were created naturally and without any direct instruction from the participants. Additionally, the neuronal patterns retained the encoded patterns even after the task was finished and reflected the likelihood of upcoming stimuli.
Pawel Tacikowski served as the study’s lead author, along with Guldamla Kalendar and Davide Ciliberti as co-authors.
For the first time,” this study shows how the brain interprets space and time as analogous mechanisms for seemingly very different kinds of information,” Fried said. The human hippocampal-entorhinal system has exhibited how these representations of object trajectories in time are incorporated into neuronal behavior.
About this news about research in time perception and neuroscience
Author: Will Houston
Source: UCLA
Contact: Will Houston – UCLA
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: The findings will appear in Nature
