Scientists identify brain circuit responsible for building memories during sleep

Neuroscientists at the University of Alberta have identified a mechanism that may help build memories during deep sleep. In a study published last month in eNeuro, the researchers focused on the role of the nucleus reuniens, an area of the brain that connects two other brain structures involved in creating memories and may co-ordinate their activity during slow-wave sleep. “Slow […]

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Recalling good memories together

Recalling positive memories can help you feel better about yourself. Charlotte van Schie is aiming to use this fact to help people with a borderline personality disorder become stronger. She has written about her research for Human Brain Mapping, and at the LIBC open day on 11 October she gave a “flash talk” titled “Coloured memories in the brain.” Positive […]

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Touch can produce detailed, lasting memories

Exploring objects through touch can generate detailed, durable memories for those objects, even when we don’t intend to memorize the object’s details, according to findings published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “An especially interesting finding was that participants were able to visually identify an object they had never seen but only touched one week […]

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Happy childhood memories linked to better health later in life

People who have fond memories of childhood, specifically their relationships with their parents, tend to have better health, less depression and fewer chronic illnesses as older adults, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. “We know that memory plays a huge part in how we make sense of the world—how we organize our past experiences and how we […]

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New research puts distinct memories of similar events in their place

Neuroscientists have found new evidence on how distinct memories of similar events are represented in the brain. Its findings, which appear in the journal Neuron, correct a previous misconception of how such memories are stored in the hippocampus—a part of the brain crucial for memory and understanding space. “Previous research suggested that brain cells were ‘re-mapped’ in making distinctions between […]

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