Possible Circuits Associated with Working Memory Identified

According to experts studying the human brain, we regularly employ the help of three different types of memories in our daily lives. One of these types is the declarative memory, which helps us remember facts, people and places, another is the procedural memory, which allows us to learn how to play a sport or learn a game, while the third is the working memory. This is a very specific type of memory, as its main job is to allow us to remember information in the short run, lasting for just a few seconds.

Researchers have been wondering for a long time how it is that working memory works inside the human brain and also what type of mechanisms are employed in this ability. Now, scientists at the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) announce that they may have found the answer to this question. The team reveals that it has been working with brain circuits kept in vitro, and that it has recently been able to create stimulus-specific, sustained activity patterns in these circuits. The main goal of the study has been to identify the mechanisms employed in working memory.

The leaders of the new investigation have been CWRU Associate Professor of Neuroscience and Physiology/Biophysics Ben W. Strowbridge, PhD, who collaborated closely with CWRU School of Medicine, MD/PhD student in the neurosciences graduate program Phillip Larimer, PhD. The team has oriented its efforts on mossy cells, a type of neurons that were collected from rodents. These nerve cells are often damaged in patients with epilepsy, and can be usually found in the hippocampus, a region of the brain that plays an important role in memory, learning and spatial navigation.

“Seeing the memory deficits that so many people with epilepsy suffer from led me to wonder if there might be a fundamental connection between hippocampal mossy cells and memory circuits,” Larimer says. “This is the first time anyone has stored information in spontaneously active pieces of mammalian brain tissue. It is probably not a coincidence that we were able to show this memory effect in the hippocampus, the brain region most associated with human memory,” Strowbridge adds. “Memory was not evident in one cell but it was evident in a population of cells,” he concludes, quoted by PhysOrg.