How to make the brain better maintain memory?

Alexander Barnett, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences, and a team of researchers have found that an important part of the brain that helps retain memories — the hippocampus — may interact dynamically with the rest of the brain more dynamically than previously thought
.
This is especially true
when it comes to event boundaries (the beginning and end of memory).

"At the event boundary, the hippocampus actually reliably reaches peak activity," Barnett said
.
"What's more remarkable is that in those moments, we see that the hippocampus is communicating
with other areas of the brain.
" The more the brain communicates with these regions, the better people's memory of events that just happened, and it really targets these event boundary time points
.
”

A collaborative study conducted by Barnett and researchers at the University of California, Davis found that increased activity of the hippocampus at the boundary of an event may play a key role
in better identifying when people with memory impairment are having difficulty.

The hippocampus is a hippocampus-like bundle of neurons located deep in the temporal lobe of the brain
.
With the help of signals from other neurons in the brain, the hippocampus is essential for forming long-term episodic memories — however, for those with memory impairment, the hippocampus tends to be disconnected
from other areas of the brain.

Previously, researchers thought that the hippocampus must constantly receive information from other parts of the brain in order to form new memories
.
This overlooks
the relationship between the hippocampus and the neocortex (the part of the brain that processes cognition, emotion, and sensory perception).

The hippocampus needs to get information to do its job
.
When it's disconnected, it's as if it's not getting the information it needs to build new memories," Barnett said
.

Barnett's research focuses on how altered online communication affects people
with memory impairment.
He used functional MRIs to scan brain activity and combined this research with new theories in cognitive psychology to understand short- and long-term memory
.

To gain a deeper understanding of connectivity between the hippocampus and neocortical regions, Barnett and researchers from the University of California, Davis, tested two groups of people
.
Everyone watches the same 15-minute cartoon.

One group was told to click a button when they felt a meaningful event ended, when another event started—essentially marking event boundaries
.

Meanwhile, the second group watched the same cartoon, but without any explanation, while undergoing an MRI scan
.

The researchers found that both groups represented the same boundaries of events throughout the film
.
MRI scans in the second group showed increased hippocampal activity at the boundary of the event
.

To test memory, researchers often use techniques such as asking patients to memorize and memorize a set of words
.
But this approach may not be enough
.

Barnett explains that episodic memory, or the memory of everyday events, helps our brain know what to expect in certain situations, such as eating out
.
It is thought that the hippocampus always stores episodic memories
along with other parts of the brain.
But new research suggests that the hippocampus only needs to encode memories
when new events occur.

"For the hippocampus, it's not necessary to constantly encode new information, but just at these special right moments, the hippocampus needs to communicate to form these new memories," Barnett said
.

The results of this study may help researchers identify behavioral interventions to help improve patients' attention
span at the event boundary.
That, in turn, helps reduce memory impairment, Barnett said
.

"One question is: Do we keep doing this, or do we try to focus on these very special moments when we think new events are remembered for a long time," he said.
By understanding how the brain works normally, perhaps we can use it to help improve memory in those with memory difficulties
.
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