Zap the brain to improve spatial memory
Do you often forget the place where you park your car? Don’t worry, scientists are on the verge of developing a treatment which they say could help banish this dilemma.
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, said their new treatment that involves stimulating a critical junction in the brain could help strengthen spatial memory in patients.
The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, could lead to a new method for boosting memory in patients with early Alzheimer’s disease, they said.
Lead researcher Dr Itzhak Fried said: “Losing our ability to remember recent events and form new memories is one of the most dreaded afflictions of the human condition.”
“Our preliminary results provide evidence supporting a possible mechanism for enhancing memory, particularly as people age or suffer from early dementia,” Prof Fried was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail.
“At the same time, we studied a small sample of patients, so our results should be interpreted with caution,”
In the study, Dr Fried and his team focused on a brain site called the entorhinal cortex. Considered the doorway to the hippocampus, which helps form and store memories, the entorhinal cortex plays a crucial role in transforming daily experience into lasting memories.
The team followed seven epilepsy patients who already had electrodes implanted in their brains to pinpoint the origin of their seizures. They monitored the electrodes to record neuron activity as memories were being formed.
Using a video game featuring a taxi, virtual passengers and a cyber city, the researchers tested whether deep-brain stimulation of the entorhinal cortex or the hippocampus altered recall.
Future studies, they said, will determine if deep-brain stimulation can enhance other types of recall, such as verbal memories.
