Researchers accurately predicted participants' locations (labeled below
by letters) in this virtual room by looking at patterns of brain
activity.
Credit: Hassabis et al., Current Biology 2008
4 comments:
Eva
said...
This is a really interesting topic; the fact that we can measure brain activity and development in the hippocampus is amazing. With this relatively new realization, we can probably have a different view on autism and other diseases of the brain that effect you and what you do. New tests can be done to cure and improve things like that, and we can see the progress that people make. Memory can also be improved in people who have a hard time remembering things, because they can do the same thing that those test subjects had done: go through a series of rooms and try to memorize the patterns and what is in them, then navigate their way through without trouble.
I thought this article was really interesting. I agree that it could help people who have a hard time remembering things. It may develop into a program that could help people get around big places without needing signs by scanning the memory of a person who knows the place well and looking at it as if it were a map, but it might be more practical to have a more detailed vision with references like "where the big window is," or "where the abstract painting is," because a map is more like a diagram, and that doesn't help in certain situations. If there is a square room and a door at each side: a red door, a green door, a blue door, and a yellow door, and each leads to something different, and the goal is to get to the thing that the red door leads to, a diagram won't help you if everything is symmetrical, since you could be facing one way and what looks like forward in the map is another. Also, if the place is not symmetrical, then it is easier to go to "into the blue building, and the second room on the white wall" than "forward, left, door around the corner, and second door on the right wall."
Really weird. I don't want anybody doing that to me. It was nice that they told you about spatial memory and what it means. that was cool that you could read minds. I would want to do that any day that I could. I wonder when they will come u with the next invention, like reading everyday memory. That might cause havoc, so let's wait a bit. That was a pretty interesting article. I like how the articles vary every week on the blog. This one was quite unusual. Cool article!
Sophia said, It is so cool that a team of British scientists tried to look at memories by doing a brian scan on a human.
So the team of British scientists recently used brain scans to look at the spatial memories of four people.
To store and retrieve the spatial memories, the scientists use a part of the brain called the hippocampus. To read spatial memories, the British scientists studied the hippocampi of the participants. The scientists asked each participant to sit down at a computer and wander through three-dimensional rooms that appeared on the screen. These virtual rooms contained images of things, like clocks and doors, so that the people could know where they were.
As the people became familiar with these rooms, their brain cells were remembering where things were, and how to get from one point to another. After going through the rooms, the participants were instructed to go to a specific location within the rooms and stare at the floor for five seconds.
At this point, the scientists took pictures of the subjects’ brains using an MRI.
As participants stared at the floor, the scientists took MRI scans to measure brain activity and looked at specific parts of the hippocampus. They did this many times. After the tests, the scientists could identify patterns in the subjects’ brains. The researchers connected particular locations in the virtual rooms to particular areas of the brain.
By looking at patterns on the brain scans, the scientists were able to read the memories of the test subjects. If a subject were to stand in a certain corner of the virtual room, the scientists would know by observing his or her brain activity.
This experiment shows that it is possible to use MRIs to gather some kinds of memories from people. In conclusion this is what I learned and remembered. This was a cool article and fun to learn about.
4 comments:
This is a really interesting topic; the fact that we can measure brain activity and development in the hippocampus is amazing. With this relatively new realization, we can probably have a different view on autism and other diseases of the brain that effect you and what you do. New tests can be done to cure and improve things like that, and we can see the progress that people make. Memory can also be improved in people who have a hard time remembering things, because they can do the same thing that those test subjects had done: go through a series of rooms and try to memorize the patterns and what is in them, then navigate their way through without trouble.
I thought this article was really interesting. I agree that it could help people who have a hard time remembering things. It may develop into a program that could help people get around big places without needing signs by scanning the memory of a person who knows the place well and looking at it as if it were a map, but it might be more practical to have a more detailed vision with references like "where the big window is," or "where the abstract painting is," because a map is more like a diagram, and that doesn't help in certain situations. If there is a square room and a door at each side: a red door, a green door, a blue door, and a yellow door, and each leads to something different, and the goal is to get to the thing that the red door leads to, a diagram won't help you if everything is symmetrical, since you could be facing one way and what looks like forward in the map is another. Also, if the place is not symmetrical, then it is easier to go to "into the blue building, and the second room on the white wall" than "forward, left, door around the corner, and second door on the right wall."
Really weird. I don't want anybody doing that to me. It was nice that they told you about spatial memory and what it means. that was cool that you could read minds. I would want to do that any day that I could. I wonder when they will come u with the next invention, like reading everyday memory. That might cause havoc, so let's wait a bit. That was a pretty interesting article. I like how the articles vary every week on the blog. This one was quite unusual. Cool article!
Sophia said,
It is so cool that a team of British scientists tried to look at memories by doing a brian scan on a human.
So the team of British scientists recently used brain scans to look at the spatial memories of four people.
To store and retrieve the spatial memories, the scientists use a part of the brain called the hippocampus. To read spatial memories, the British scientists studied the hippocampi of the participants. The scientists asked each participant to sit down at a computer and wander through three-dimensional rooms that appeared on the screen. These virtual rooms contained images of things, like clocks and doors, so that the people could know where they were.
As the people became familiar with these rooms, their brain cells were remembering where things were, and how to get from one point to another. After going through the rooms, the participants were instructed to go to a specific location within the rooms and stare at the floor for five seconds.
At this point, the scientists took pictures of the subjects’ brains using an MRI.
As participants stared at the floor, the scientists took MRI scans to measure brain activity and looked at specific parts of the hippocampus. They did this many times. After the tests, the scientists could identify patterns in the subjects’ brains. The researchers connected particular locations in the virtual rooms to particular areas of the brain.
By looking at patterns on the brain scans, the scientists were able to read the memories of the test subjects. If a subject were to stand in a certain corner of the virtual room, the scientists would know by observing his or her brain activity.
This experiment shows that it is possible to use MRIs to gather some kinds of memories from people. In conclusion this is what I learned and remembered. This was a cool article and fun to learn about.
Post a Comment