RxPG News Feed for RxPG News

Medical Research Health Special Topics World
  Home
 
   Health
 Aging
 Asian Health
 Events
 Fitness
 Food & Nutrition
 Happiness
 Men's Health
 Mental Health
 Occupational Health
 Parenting
 Public Health
 Sleep Hygiene
 Women's Health
 
   Healthcare
 Africa
 Australia
 Canada Healthcare
 China Healthcare
 India Healthcare
 New Zealand
 South Africa
 UK
 USA
 World Healthcare
 
   Latest Research
 Aging
 Alternative Medicine
 Anaethesia
 Biochemistry
 Biotechnology
 Cancer
 Cardiology
 Clinical Trials
 Cytology
 Dental
 Dermatology
 Embryology
 Endocrinology
 ENT
 Environment
 Epidemiology
 Gastroenterology
 Genetics
 Gynaecology
 Haematology
 Immunology
 Infectious Diseases
 Medicine
 Metabolism
 Microbiology
 Musculoskeletal
 Nephrology
 Neurosciences
  Brain Diseases
  Demyelinating Diseases
  Headache
  Memory
   Intelligence
  Neurochemistry
  Neurodegenerative Diseases
  Regeneration
  Spinal Cord Diseases
  Stroke
  Taste
  Trigeminal Neuralgia
 Obstetrics
 Ophthalmology
 Orthopedics
 Paediatrics
 Pathology
 Pharmacology
 Physiology
 Physiotherapy
 Psychiatry
 Radiology
 Rheumatology
 Sports Medicine
 Surgery
 Toxicology
 Urology
 
   Medical News
 Awards & Prizes
 Epidemics
 Launch
 Opinion
 Professionals
 
   Special Topics
 Ethics
 Euthanasia
 Evolution
 Feature
 Odd Medical News
 Climate

Last Updated: Oct 11, 2012 - 10:22:56 PM
Memory Channel

subscribe to Memory newsletter
Latest Research : Neurosciences : Memory

   EMAIL   |   PRINT
New Research on Mental Time Travel

Dec 23, 2005 - 4:00:00 PM , Reviewed by: Himanshu Tyagi
"When you try to remember something that happened in the past, what you do is try to reinstate your mental context from that event. If you can get yourself into the mindset that you were in during the event you're trying to remember, that will allow you to remember specific details. The techniques that we used in this study allow us to visualize from moment to moment how well subjects are recapturing their mindset from the original event." - Kenneth Norman

 
[RxPG] Neuroscientists at Princeton University have developed a new way of tracking people's mental state as they think back to previous events -- a process that has been described as "mental time travel."

The findings, detailed in the Dec. 23 issue of Science, will aid efforts to learn more about how people mine the recesses of memory and could have a wide-ranging impact in the field of neuroscience, including studies of brain disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.

The researchers showed nine participants a series of pictures and then asked them to recall what they had seen. By applying a computerized pattern-recognition program to brain scanning data, the researchers were able to show that the participants' brain state gradually aligned with their brain state from when they first studied the pictures. This supports the theory that memory retrieval is a form of mental time travel.

In addition, by measuring second-by-second changes in how well participants were recapturing their previous brain state, the researchers were able to predict what kind of item the subjects would recall next, several seconds before they actually remembered that item.

The study was conducted by Kenneth Norman, an assistant professor of psychology, and Sean Polyn, who earned his Ph.D in psychology from Princeton in 2005 and is a now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Polyn and Norman collaborated with Jonathan Cohen, director of Princeton's Center for the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior, and Vaidehi Natu, a researcher in Norman's lab.

"When you try to remember something that happened in the past, what you do is try to reinstate your mental context from that event," said Norman. "If you can get yourself into the mindset that you were in during the event you're trying to remember, that will allow you to remember specific details. The techniques that we used in this study allow us to visualize from moment to moment how well subjects are recapturing their mindset from the original event."

In the experiment, participants studied a total of 90 images in three categories -- celebrity faces, famous locations and common objects -- and then attempted to recall the images. Norman and his colleagues used Princeton's functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner to capture the participants' brain activity patterns as they studied the images. They then trained a computer program to distinguish between the patterns of brain activity associated with studying faces, locations or objects.

The computer program was used to track participants' brain activity as they recalled the images to see how well it matched the patterns associated with the initial viewing of the images. The researchers found that patterns of brain activity for specific categories, such as faces, started to emerge approximately five seconds before subjects recalled items from that category -- suggesting that participants were bringing to mind the general properties of the images in order to cue for specific details.

"What we have learned over the years is that what you get out of memory depends on how you cue memory. If you have the perfect cue, you can remember things that you had no idea were floating around in your head," Norman said. "Our method gives us some ability to see what cues participants are using, which in turn gives us some ability to predict what participants will recall. We are hopeful that, in the long run, this kind of work will help psychologists develop better theories of how people strategically cue memory, and also will suggest ways of making these cues more effective.”



Publication: Dec. 23 issue of Science
On the web: www.princeton.edu 

Advertise in this space for $10 per month. Contact us today.


Related Memory News
Enriched environment as a child helps reverse memory problem
How brain pacemakers erase diseased messages
Relational memory requires time and sleep
Phase locking of hippocampal interneuron membrane potential
Poor memory could signal heart disease
Memories: It's all in the packaging
Atrial Fibrillation linked to Reduced Cognitive Performance
Human Memory Gene Identified
How the Brain Loses Plasticity of Youth
Apple Juice Inproves Memory By Boosting Acetylcholine Production

Subscribe to Memory Newsletter

Enter your email address:


 Additional information about the news article
The study was funded by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health.
 Feedback
For any corrections of factual information, to contact the editors or to send any medical news or health news press releases, use feedback form

Top of Page

 
Contact us

RxPG Online

Nerve

 

    Full Text RSS

© All rights reserved by RxPG Medical Solutions Private Limited (India)