Monday, 30 March 2015
Is There an Evolutionary Continuity between Spatial Navigation and Declarative Memory?
Sometimes someone comes up with a hypothesis whose parts fit together so neatly that it seems amazing that no one has ever thought of it before. A good example is the hypothesis proposed by György Buzsáki and Edvard Moser in the January 2013 issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, where they propose that there is an evolutionary continuity between the cognitive processes that we use to orient ourselves in space and and the mechanisms that underlie our declarative memory. (more…)
Memory and the Brain | Comments Closed
Monday, 16 September 2013
Brain Rhythms: The Oscillations That Bind
Most of the neurons in the human brain emit nerve impulses (also known as action potentials) at a specific frequency, which may vary from just a few per second to several hundred per second. The chaotic brain activity revealed by an electroencephalogram (EEG) reflects the summing of all these oscillations in the billions of neurons in the brain.
Not so long ago in the history of neuroscience, the chaotic nature of all these oscillations caused them to be regarded as background noise and given little attention, or even dismissed as an epiphenomenon of no importance. But times have changed. The temporal dimension of brain activity, as expressed by these brain rhythms, is now central to neuroscientific research on complex topics such as sleep and consciousness. (more…)
The Emergence of Consciousness | 1 comment
