Credit score: Daume et al. (Neuron, 2024).
The human working reminiscence (WM) is the cognitive system accountable for the short-term storage and processing of data very important to job completion. In distinction, human long-term reminiscence (LTM) is the system that holds data for extended durations of time, organizing acquired information into distinct classes, corresponding to details, occasions, abilities and habits.
For many years, most psychologists and neuroscientists have seen these two reminiscence parts as separate techniques, one tackling short-term and the opposite long-term duties, supported by distinct neural processes. Due to this fact, most research performed thus far have targeted on solely one in every of these techniques, as a substitute of exploring the potential connections between working reminiscence and long-term reminiscence processes.
Researchers on the Cedars-Sinai Medical Heart and different institutes just lately got down to concurrently examine the neural underpinnings of each WM and LTM, to find out whether or not these techniques make the most of some frequent mechanisms to retailer data. Their findings, revealed in Neuron, counsel that the 2 techniques work together within the hippocampus, with persistent WM exercise predicting the formation of LTM.
“Working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM) are often viewed as separate cognitive systems,” wrote Daume, Kamiński and their colleagues of their paper. “Little is known about how these systems interact when forming memories. We recorded single neurons in the human medial temporal lobe while patients maintained novel items in WM and completed a subsequent recognition memory test for the same items.”
The researchers carried out experiments involving 41 sufferers recognized with epilepsy who had electrodes implanted of their brains by way of an invasive process to watch their mind exercise. These electrodes allowed the researchers to file the exercise of single neurons of their medial temporal lobe, which incorporates numerous mind areas related to reminiscence encoding and data processing, significantly the hippocampus and amygdala.
Experimental design and behavioral evaluation. Credit score: Neuron (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2024.09.013
The sufferers had been requested first to finish a job designed to interact the WM after which a job that recruits the LTM. The researchers then in contrast the single-neuron recordings they collected whereas the contributors had been finishing these two duties, to find out whether or not the 2 techniques shared any single-neuron mechanisms.
“In the hippocampus, but not in the amygdala, the level of WM content-selective persistent activity during WM maintenance was predictive of whether the item was later recognized with high confidence or forgotten,” wrote Daume, Kamiński and their colleagues.
“By contrast, visually evoked activity in the same cells was not predictive of LTM formation. During LTM retrieval, memory-selective neurons responded more strongly to familiar stimuli for which persistent activity was high while they were maintained in WM.”
Curiously, the researchers discovered that persistent exercise of category-selective neurons within the hippocampus whereas contributors had been storing data of their WM predicted the formation of LTMs. As well as, selective neurons related to LTMs fired extra when contributors had been offered with gadgets that had been related to a powerful WM exercise.
“Our study suggests that hippocampal persistent activity of the same cells supports both WM maintenance and LTM encoding, thereby revealing a common single-neuron component of these two memory systems,” wrote Daume, Kamiński and their colleagues.
The outcomes gathered by this crew of researchers supply new perception into the neural underpinnings of WM and LTM processes, suggesting that they’re linked by a typical single-neuron mechanism. Sooner or later, they may inform further research specializing in this mechanism and exploring the hyperlink between the 2 reminiscence techniques.
Extra data:
Jonathan Daume et al, Persistent exercise throughout working reminiscence upkeep predicts long-term reminiscence formation within the human hippocampus, Neuron (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2024.09.013.
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