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    Home > Active Ingredient News > Study of Nervous System > ​Nat Commun | Revealing the secrets of the brain's memory storage

    ​Nat Commun | Revealing the secrets of the brain's memory storage

    • Last Update: 2021-04-23
    • Source: Internet
    • Author: User
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    Editor | Enzyme Beauty Memory is the ability of the human brain to store information and feedback information.
    The key to human beings' ability to understand and transform the world is that the human brain has excellent thinking and memory abilities.

    Can the human enhancement (superhuman) with the memory plug-in storage function expected by Elon Musk be realized? Where is the memory storage location of the brain? How does the brain perform memory classification, retrieval and control? The long-term memory of the brain is divided into explicit memory and implicit memory.
    Explicit memory includes semantic memory and episodic memory.

    Semantic memory refers to the conceptual memory of general facts.
    It is an objective knowledge that has nothing to do with personal experience.
    While episodic memory records specific events in life and is closely related to personal experience.
    Both memories help us understand and respond.
    The world around.

    Decades of clinical and experimental studies have shown that semantic memory and episodic memory are stored in two separate brain regions.

    Recently, a collaborative team of Fudan University and York University has discovered brain areas related to the control of memory retrieval.
    These brain areas assist the brain in performing cognitive control functions.

    Related research results were published in Nature Communications under the topic of Varying demands for cognitive control reveals shared neural processes supporting semantic and episodic memory retrieval.

    The research team designed two independent experiments.

    The first set of experiments used functional magnetic resonance imaging technology and found that when the brain extracts semantic memory and episodic memory, the activation of a part of the common brain area is enhanced.

    The results of the study show that the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and the anterior insular cortex (aINS) are all involved in the extraction of weakly associated semantics and weakly coded episodic memory.

    The second set of large-scale individual difference experiments further discovered a shared brain area circuit, in which the left inferior frontal gyrus and preinsular cortex and the core area of ​​the default network ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) The weakened functional connection of) is related to the better performance of the two kinds of memory retrieval.

    The results of these two sets of experiments revealed a common neural circuit that assists in the extraction of semantic memory and episodic memory, so that the brain can flexibly extract long-term memories with different functions.

    "Memory allows us to understand the world and better interact with the surrounding world flexibly.

    Although in most cases, we may be able to cope with the current job after memory coding.

    For example, remember to prepare beach towels for the upcoming vacation trip, but in most cases, In other situations such as organizing luggage for business trips, this strong memory may not matter.

    Therefore, we need to strictly control the retrieval of related memories to solve different tasks in different situations.

    Our results indicate that this control process may be in Semantic memory and episodic memory are shared between types.

    "The first and corresponding author of the article, Deniz Vatansever, a young researcher at the Fudan University Institute of Brain-inspired Intelligence Science and Technology, said that the study showed that a set of shared systems in the brain may be used by everyday humans.
    The retrieval of semantic memory and episodic memory plays an important control role, that is, our memory system may rely on shared neural mechanisms.

    The co-author of the article, Professor Elizabeth Jefferies, Department of Psychology, York University, believes: "In order to generate appropriate thoughts and behaviors, we must use our memory bank in a highly flexible way.

    This new research focuses on the control processes in the brain and discovers how the brain can memorize and encode infrequently used words or personal experiences that are not well memorized.

    This control of memory allows us to be creative and adapt to changes in our goals or environment.

    "Figure 1 Neural circuits related to controlling the extraction of semantic and episodic memory: a) Studies have shown that whether it is semantic memory or episodic memory, the performance of extracting weakly associated memory is related to the left inferior frontal gyrus/anterior insular cortex (LIFG / aINS).
    ) There is a positive correlation between the low connectivity of the mass to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC).

    b) Using Neurosynth database to meta-analyze and decode the cognitive terms involved in the regression model, the word cloud shows the top 100 most relevant terms, terminology The size of the text corresponds to the strength of the association.

    c) In the independent seed point functional connection analysis, there are a large number of positive connections (r> 0) in the brain area of ​​the default network and edge network in the network division of vmPFC and Yeo-7, which is different from the prominent network.
    The ventral attention network, the dorsal attention network, and the frontal control network have significant negative connections (r <0).

    The study found that two different types of long-term memory share a common storage area in the brain, and confirmed the frontal lobe The cortex can perform cognitive control of these brain areas, which is of great significance for both basic neurological research and the research of various memory disorders including dementia.

    At the same time, finding a storage system for long-term memory can realize the retrieval of memory databases And intelligent information knowledge management, this discovery may provide ideas for the development of a new generation of artificial intelligence systems.

    Figure 2 Deniz Vatansever team conducted experiments at the Zhangjiang International Brain Imaging Center of Fudan University.
    Original link: /s41467-021-22443-2 Plate maker: Notes for reprinting on the 11th [Non-original article] The copyright of this article belongs to the author of the article.
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