What Memories Look Like: Researchers Imprint, Recall Groups of Coupled Neurons

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What Memories Look Like: Researchers Imprint, Recall Groups of Coupled Neurons
http://www.medgadget.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/neurons-firing-1.jpgColumbia University researchers have done something quite amazing with groups of neurons, but just how amazing is yet to be understood. Specifically, the investigators were able to stimulate a connected set of neurons in a living mouse to learn to fire together, and then when even one of the set’s neurons was fired later, even up to a day later, the whole ensemble of neurons again flashed as one. This seems to prove a long held hypothesis,*originally conceived by psychologist*Donald Hebb, that groups of neurons activated together form*the core mechanism of how we learn and memorize things.

The feat was achieved using optogenetics, a technique that makes specific neurons in a living animal react to flashes of light. By artificially manipulating the networks of neurons that work as a group, the*technique may one day lead to direct methods of treating a whole slew of neurological and psychiatric conditions. Finding the ensembles that work together with respect to specific diseases*may be required for this technique to actually be applicable for some conditions.

Here’s video of a group of neurons firing as one. This is what memories actually look like:



Study in Science: Imprinting and recalling cortical ensembles… (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6300/691)

Via:*Columbia University… (http://datascience.columbia.edu/researchers-reprogram-network-brain-cells-light)

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