A step to identify a key components to preserve memory in patients with neurodegenerative diseases
(milestone in understanding memory processing)
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Biologists at UC San Diego have discovered that electrical oscillations in the brain, long thought to play a role in organizing cognitive functions such as memory, are critically important for the brain to store the information that allows us to navigate through our physical environment. Their discovery has important implications for understanding the underlying causes of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and for restoring memory in areas of the brain that are necessary for orientation.
"This work is the first to demonstrate that oscillatory activity has a well-defined function in brain areas that store memories," says Stefan Leutgeb, an assistant professor of biology at UCSD who headed the team of researchers.
Scientists have long known that among the first brain areas to degenerate in Alzheimer's disease, leading to symptoms such as memory loss and disorientation, are the hippocampus and the nearby entorhinal cortex, important structures for the formation of memory. Those two regions of the brain contain three types of neurons that contribute to the formation of spatial memories and the spatial information in episodic memories from our life experiences.
These three types of neurons provide an internal GPS system to the brain. For example, one type of neuron, called "place cells," generates electrical activity only when an animal is at a certain position, while another type, called "head direction cells," acts like a compass. A third class of neurons, called "grid cells," provides grid-like patterns for the brain to store memories of physical dimensions of the external environment. The most striking feature about these cells is that their electrical activity is distributed at equidistant, periodic locations within each cell (shown in the image). Grid cells were discovered by Norwegian scientists in rats in 2005, but in 2010 researchers in London detected groups of cells in human entorhinal cortex that share the same characteristics. Read more: sciencedaily.com
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