How does the brain understand and track the passage of time? With a mechanism similar to the one it uses to understand where we are. According to a study published in naturecertain types of brain cells are activated In a way that reflects the order and structure of individual experiences. The brain memorizes these activation sequences and is able to reproduce them when it is at rest, so that it can also use them to prepare for future stimuli.
This research is the first experimental evidence of how certain brain cells work Work on integrating “what” and “when” information. To form a representation of the flow of experiences over time. It is the result of the work of a group coordinated by Isaac Farid, professor of neurosurgery, psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School at UCLA.
Place and time. “Get to know The way experiences unfold over time “It is important for the human mind to form memories, predict possible future outcomes, and guide behaviors,” explains Farid. Previous work by a group that included Fried used neuroimaging tools to understand this How the brain processes spatial navigationIt is a process in which two brain regions important for memory, the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex, play essential roles.
A type of hippocampal cell, “Place cells” or position cellsthey are activated when we are at a specific position in space, such as placing an “X” on a map. But you also need to form a cognitive map of the environment “grid cell”specific cells of the entorhinal cortex that are shaped like a coordinate system and They provide a measure of the spatial distance traveled.
Similar mechanism. The discovery of the existence of this GPS was rewarded with the 2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine (awarded to John O’Keefe and spouses May Britt and Edvard Moser). Fried’s group also confirmed its presence in the human brain. Subsequent research demonstrated that the same system was needed And also to represent experiences that have nothing to do with the sense of spaceSuch as the passage of time, sound frequency, and properties of objects.
In the correct order. The new study recruited 17 people who had electrodes implanted in deep brain structures to treat a severe form of epilepsy. Their neural activity was recorded during a complex procedure in which they had to perform different actions (such as determining whether an image scrolled on a personal computer screen showed a person or not), and recognize different patterns and sequences of images.
Neurons in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex gradually changed their activity into a code, i.e Fixing the temporal structure of complex sequences of images as memory Within the offer provided to volunteers. This representation of images was formed over time spontaneously, without any specific influence, and remained stable even at the end of the experiment. Furthermore, the sequence of neural activation reflects the probability that a particular stimulus will appear or not.
“This study shows us for the first time How the brain uses similar mechanisms to represent very different types of information: space and time», concluded Fried.
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