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epileptics
Hippocampus activated by cues; Researchers discover how brain works when
something from past remembered
By LAURA STONE, Canwest News ServiceDecember 10, 2009
Scientists have solved a mystery about the brain that could one day help
hundreds of thousands of people with epilepsy.
It's all linked to the way humans experience memory, according to
researchers at the University of Toronto and Krembil Neuroscience Centre.
Finding out how the brain works when we remember a part of our past can help
scientists develop tools to better understand and monitor brain disorders
such as epilepsy, and perhaps even Alzheimer's disease, said Melanie Cohn, a
neuropsychologist and author of the study, to be published in the journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.
The part of the brain that is often damaged in epilepsy is called the
hippocampus, a region on both the left and right sides of the temporal lobe.
While some scientists have argued that the hippocampus becomes activated
when someone knows they have a memory, the Canadian researchers have
confirmed that it is engaged only when someone relives that memory.
The hippocampus is activated by cues that are part of the memory, which
allows someone to revisit the past, said Cohn. "The hippocampus takes all
sorts of different kinds of information - like sounds, pictures, words,
experiences, emotions, all of that - and kind of glues it all together to
make a personal memory, like little movies from your life," she said.
For example, if a woman sees a man in a store and is sure they've met before
but can't recall when or where, her hippocampus is not active. But if the
two begin talking, and establish they met at a party, and begin to form cues
about what they talked about, the woman will start reliving the memory in
her brain because the hippocampus will become activated.
Now that scientists know what the hippocampus does, Cohn said the research,
which took about a year to complete, can be used to develop better
scientific tools to study this part of the brain, and to monitor the
progression of disorders and diseases. For people with epilepsy especially,
it will help gauge risks of memory decline associated with surgery.
"Our hope in all the research we do here is to make better predictions about
how surgery might affect memory in these patients," she said. "If we do find
a treatment - for example, for Alzheimer's or epilepsy - we can see if ...
over time that treatment improves the function of the hippocampus."
Dianna Findlay, CEO of Epilepsy Canada, said she applauded any research that
could offer improved information to patients prior to surgeries. "That would
be a godsend, because it would alleviate some of the stress." Findlay said
that she hopes the research will be made available to neurologists and
doctors across Canada.
The researchers used MRI machines on human subjects to look at brain
activity and measure when the hippocampus became activated. Researchers
showed participants two unrelated words, such as "alligator" and "chair,"
and later showed them just one of the words.
While participants knew they recognized the words, their hippocampus only
became active when they were shown the words together. This triggered
memories of the context - such as the sentence they made up to include both
words.
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