Situational memory starts in the hippocampus of the brain. Researchers found that by combining associative learning, optogenetics and cell labeling, the memory of mice is formed. In this way, they can label each neuron formed by an event in the hippocampus. These neurons are called memory traces, and their activation is the basis of memory recall.
The episodic memory stored in the hippocampus is temporary. Scientists believe that the formation of connections between cortical cells and neurons makes temporary memory permanent.
To remember well, you need to sleep well. For a long time, people know it but don't know why. Now, scientists may have found the secret: when people go into deep sleep, brain neurons grow new synapses, strengthen the connections between neurons, so as to consolidate and strengthen memory.
The research was published in the US journal Science on the 5th. Professor Wen Biao Gan, research director and Chinese scholar at New York University, said: 'this achievement is particularly important for children's learning. If you keep learning, or even sacrifice sleep to learn, that's not good, because brain neurons don't have new synapses, you can't remember. 'anyway, sleeping is to learn better, not to waste time.
In order to study the effect of sleep on memory, Gan Wenbiao and his research team developed two kinds of mice to learn to stand on the rotating stick. One kind of mice learned to sleep for 7 hours after one hour, and the other kind of mice learned the same time but could not sleep. The researchers used two-photon imaging technology to observe the motor cortex of the mouse brain, and found that the sleeping mice had more new synapses and stronger learning ability, while the sleep deprived mice basically had no new synapse growth, so their learning ability was relatively weak.