14 DAY TRIAL // In a new study University of Oregon investigators conducted on lab rats, the team revealed that experiential learning is indeed the best way to imprint solid, long-duration memories into the brain.
This finding could have significant implications for the human brain as well, since rats were used because they are such good proxies for our own brain structure. Interestingly enough, teachers have always argued that this type of learning is the best.
What separates it from traditional learning methods is the fact that this technique proposes that students should be engaged and challenged in the process of learning. In turn, their deep involvement is somehow aiding the brain remember things better.
In the new investigation, the team determined that seeing and exploring were critical for the rats memory-forming abilities. Those who learned experientially were capable of recalling their memories much later on than their peers, and in much more vivid detail.
During the experiments, researchers focused on place cells, special nerve cells in a region of the brain called the hippocampus. The latter is known to play a tremendously important role in helping us position ourselves in space, form new memories, and other higher cognitive functions.
Place cells are very important in their own right, since they are believed to be responsible for producing a mental map of the environment around us. Experiencing or seeing an even therefore acts by triggering increased activity in these cells.
These neurons then go on to recreate the environment with extreme precision, storing details that they would have surely missed if the data was accumulated simply by reading or abstract thinking. However, the team made another interesting discovery at this point.
While seeing and experiencing set the stage for long-lasting memories to form, it was only after the event was explored that neurons burnt the actual data into memories. “The hippocampus is a small structure deep in the medial temporal lobe of humans,” David C. Rowland, PhD, explains.
“It is critical for the formation of new episodic memories, and it is therefore unsurprising that the hippocampus is also one of the main targets of memory disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease,” adds the University of Oregon scientist, who was also the lead author of a new study detailing the findings.
Rowland holds an appointment as a postdoctoral researcher with the IO Institute of Neuroscience. His team published the work in this week's early online issue of the esteemed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
“The first-person experience is essentially the basis of what we define as episodic memory. We found that the construction of this hippocampal representation of space – the map's construction – is also self-centered,” the expert explains.
“The place cells therefore appear to help create an autobiographical record of experience. Our results help to align the hippocampal 'place cell' phenomenon with the hippocampus's well-described role in episodic memory, a connection that has been elusive,” Rowland concludes.