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Memory is a “ cornerstone of human intelligence ” – our ability to remember events and store them all in one part of the brain is what elevates us above other animals, the study says.
- Researchers at the University of Leicester directly recorded brain activity in humans
- Find evidence that the human brain uses the same neurons to store all memories
- Previous theory based on animal studies states that the brain uses several neurons
- This fundamental difference could be the ‘cornerstone of human intelligence’
Scientists believe they have discovered the “cornerstone of human intelligence,” and it all depends on how we create and store memories.
Previous research has shown that animals use a technique called “pattern separation” which stores memories in separate groups of neurons in the hippocampus.
This prevents them from getting confused and it was believed that humans also probably used this technique.
But a new study by experts from the University of Leicester shows that the same group of neurons in the hippocampus store all memories.
This fundamental difference, the researchers say, may be the only factor that allowed our intellect to surpass that of other animals.
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Previous research has shown that animals use a technique called “pattern separation” which stores memories in separate neurons in the hippocampus. But a new study shows that the same group of neurons in the hippocampus store all memories. This fundamental difference, the researchers say, may be the only factor that allowed our intellect to surpass that of animals
The findings, published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, overturn 50 years of evidence.
Neuroscientist Professor Rodrigo Quiroga says: “Contrary to what everyone expects, when we record the activity of individual neurons we have discovered that there is an alternative model to the separation of patterns that stores our memories.”
The groundbreaking findings are based on an analysis of brain scans from humans, rats and monkeys.
Pattern separation is a widely accepted theory seen in many animals, but never observed directly in the human brain.
‘Previous human studies have mostly been achieved using functional magnetic resource imagery (fMRI), which does not allow for recording the activity of individual neurons,’ explains Professor Quiroga.
Both theories claim that the hippocampus is where memories are stored, but the new study claims they are all kept in the same group of neurons.
“Incredibly, when we directly recorded the activity of individual neurons, we found something completely different from what has been described in other animals,” he says.
“This could be a cornerstone of human intelligence.”
The study showed that the lack of pattern separation in memory encoding is a key difference from other species.
It has profound implications for the cognitive abilities that make humans the most intelligent in the animal kingdom.
Professor Quiroga said: ‘There is more than 50% variability in brain size in people of comparable intelligence and other animals have brains that are comparable and even larger than those of humans.
“So rather than the number of neurons, neurons in a particular area or specific anatomical differences, it seems more likely that the cognitive gap between humans and other species is due to differences in the neuronal coding principles underlying the functioning of the human brain. . “
He added: “Our thoughts are based on our memories and how we store them should certainly have an impact on our cognitive abilities.”
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