By examining how we learn and store memories, Australian and American scientists have uncovered a new mechanism of learning that might prove useful in helping people who have lost their capacity to remember as a result of brain injury or disease.
The researchers have shown that the way the brain first captures and encodes a situation or event is quite different from the way it handles subsequent learning of similar events. It is this second stage learning that holds promise if the process can be mimicked therapeutically.
Memories are formed in the part of the brain known as the ‘hippocampus’, a structure the shape of ram’s horns that passes through the right and left hemispheres. The hippocampus is very susceptible to damage through stroke or lack of oxygen, and is critically involved in Alzheimer’s disease…
