Lessons about memory from Homer Simpson

[n2doc]

In this clip from The Simpsons, Homer explains to Marge why he does not want to take an adult education class: "Every time I watch something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain." Watching the clip, or any other, engages multiple brain regions that act in parallel to generate a coherent conscious experience. For example, the visual cortical in the occipital lobes process the stream of information entering the eyes; the auditory regions in the temporal lobes process the sound entering the ears; and cells in the hippocampus encode certain features of the clip so that you form a memory of it.

Now try to remember as much of the clip as you can. Where did the scene take place? What colour were the clothes that the characters wore? What happened when Homer attended a wine-making course? According to a new study published in today's issue of Science, the same cells that are involved in forming your memory of the clip are also activated when you are remembering it.

The study was led by Itzhak Fried of the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of California, Los Angeles, and involved 13 patients with intractable epilepsy. Being unresponsive to anticonvulsants, the only remaining option for these patients was surgical removal of the abnormal tissue causing their seizures. To identify that tissue, Fried and his colleagues used a technique similar to that developed by Wilder Penfield in the 1930s - they implanted small electrodes into the patients' brains, with which they could both electrically stimulate specific parts of the cortex and record the activity of single cells.

With the electrodes embedded in their brains, the patients were presented with a series of film clips, each lasting 5-10 seconds. Some of these contained footage of animals engaging in various activities or of well-known landmarks seen from different perspectives; some showed historic events such as the moon landing; and others taken from popular television programmes contained famous actors or characters. Afterwards, the participants spent up to 5 minutes performing an unrelated task involving sorting a seres of numbers into ascending order. They were then asked to recall the clips they had watched, and to report verbally on what came to mind when they did so.

more (with clip):
http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2008/09/lessons_about_memory_from_home.php

[SheilaT]

1. And there's a lot of evidence

out there that those who continue to use their brains and learn new things all their lives don't get Alzheimer's, or don't get it as bad or as early.