Research To Help Memory Disorders

It is hoped a study into how the brain processes new information could help treat memory disorders. Edinburgh University research has looked into why people remember certain things and not others.

Scientists studied rats which had to remember where different flavours of food were hidden in a testing room.

Rats which had previously formed a schema, a mental framework of where things are to be found, could learn and hold on to new food locations rapidly.

It is already known that learning new things with which people have some familiarity is easier than storing completely new knowledge.

Scientist looked at two areas of the brain – the hippocampus, which is essential for new learning, and the neocortex, which is the likely site of memory storage for things we have learnt previously.

The researchers found new information was transferred from the hippocampus to the cortex much more quickly when linked to existing learnt information.

Understanding the connections between pathways in the neocortex could have implications for improving failing memories.

The study could also explain why, as people get older, despite building up a vast body of knowledge, they find it harder to learn new things.

It may also be why it is easier for older people to link new information to what they already know.

Richard Morris, of the university’s centre for cognitive and neural systems, said: “Holding on to new facts about things we know next to nothing about is really hard, while adding to accumulated knowledge is easy.

“Our experiments made it possible to investigate the biological mechanisms involved in that process.

“As a result of these tests, we have been able to identify that the hippocampus is critical for any new learning, but the final repository of the memory traces is in the overlying neocortex.

“The consolidation of this new information, against the background of such previously acquired mental frameworks, was remarkably rapid.”

He added that the research had implications for some memory disorders, and for people who may be under mild stress, but not for diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

He said it meant there could behavioural and cognitive tricks which people could use to store information better.