Upstream | January 28, 2009 | 22 comments

Memories have time stamps

source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/28/memory.research/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

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unimatrix0
What was the name of that guy with that stuff in that place with those things? Don't you remember?

We all suffer occasional lapses in memory. Some people suffer severe neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer's, that rob them of their ability to form memories or remember recent events.

Three new studies shed light on the way the brain forms, stores and retrieves memories. Experts say they could have implications for people with certain mental disorders.

Newly born brain cells, thousands of which are generated each day, help "time stamp" memories, according to a computer simulation by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, and the University of Queensland in Australia. The research was published in the journal Neuron.

These cells do not record an exact, absolute date -- such as January 28, 2009 -- but instead encode memories that occur around the same time similarly. In this way, the mind knows whether a memory happened before, after or alongside something else.

Neuroscientists believe that if the same neurons are active during two events, a memory linking the two may be formed.
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Follow the link and learn how memories form, fade, and persist over time.
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22 comments // Memories have time stamps

  • Packleader_1
  • marlaynek
    • 0
      marlaynek  

    • I think smell is what provokes my memories. I also have weird random dates shoved into my head like getting a haircut on feb 9th 1997 before the eigth grade dance???? Other days, and since motherhood, I can not remember what I was doing five seconds ago. haha.

    • 3 years ago
  • WhippieWoHo
  • cztheday
    • 0
      cztheday  

    • The human mind CAN be such an amazing place! To think (pun intended) that Stephen Hawking's mind can produce such briliiant intuitive leaps is beautiful and yet the same kind of human organism wasting away in prison for rape and murder seems to have a mind that operates on a level somewhere beneath the average animal predator. Imagine the differences in the "date-stamped" memories between those two different kinds of individuals... One looking back at the time when he first began to grasp concepts that elude the understanding of most of humanity and the other looking back to the first of his many victims... Like, WHOA, dude!

    • 3 years ago
  • mcwally
  • cztheday
    • 0
      cztheday  
    • cztheday:

      Well, Hannibal Lecter was, as you know, a fictional character made up by Thomas Harris for the book "Silence of the Lambs." There has long been speculation that Mr. Lecter's character was based on a combination of real life people over the past century. One of those, Ted Bundy, was clever enough to have gone to law school, but I am not aware that he was quite the bon vivant portayed in Mr. Harris' book. Certainly Mr. Harris himself is quite intelligent, but there is no evidence of which I am aware that he is anything but a clever and undoubtedly well-to-do author.

    • 3 years ago
  • krush_productions
  • Xomeron
    • 0
      Xomeron  

    • I always associate a memory with a particular thing. Seeing a Pinto reminds me of the Star Trek TNG Episode "Role Models"

    • 3 years ago
  • shylor
    • 0
      shylor  

    • I find this interesting, our minds work with many different systems. This is just a bit of the referencing system. Our minds work much like a search engine. We tag information weather we knowing do it or not. This is why many people will recall strange things at strange times. Throughout the day we tag and look up millions of things. I am sure more. If we scan a room we are looking up everything in that room.

      If I say "TV" we reference to "television" and to tons of other things. Even things we do sub-consciously are tags and referenced. It is not just time its everything. Everything references everything.

    • 3 years ago
  • heavenriots
  • unimatrix0
    • 0
      unimatrix0  

    • Memory is such a nebulous thing. I have a hard time conceptualizing memory being "stored" in the brain.

      However, memories being stored in relation to other memories makes perfect sense, and strikes me as being intuitive.

    • 3 years ago
  • timcatblues2be
  • quixotic12
  • mr_D_mcentyer
  • arcticspirit
  • bfcooper
  • pjacobs51
  • cztheday
    • 0
      cztheday  
    • bfcooper:

      I always get the tiniest little thrill when a young person scoffs at my age (47) because I know getting here after so many "near misses" in bad traffic situations, serious illnesses, and even the all-consuming grief of losing a close loved one in which you don't think you can stand to live one more minute in a world without them (but you do, of course -- except that many decide not to). So a 25-year-old today has to get through 22 land mine strewn years just to make it to where I already am. Good luck (and be sure to check the expiration dates on your perishable food items, I would hate to lose you over a spoonful of bad beans!"

      cztheday

    • 3 years ago
  • pjacobs51
    • 0
      pjacobs51  

    • I always find memories in music. Say, The Beatles during childhood, old Bowie or Rundgren in high school, or The Shins on my last rip to Seattle. I can play a song and go right back to that particular memory.

    • 3 years ago
  • heatX
  • JayPetey
    • 0
      JayPetey  
    • pjacobs51:

      I do the same. I love making the perfect soundtrack for a trip, then play it again after I get home and it evokes all the emotions and memories I had on the trip. It's like a vacation in sound.

    • 3 years ago
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