How the brain organises our experiences

Throughout our lifetime we have so many experiences – good ones and bad ones – and somehow it is all stored in our brain.

But have you ever wondered how the brain organises all this information?

In a study from NYU, researchers examined a specific dynamic of the brain – whether and how the brain will represent similarities or shared features across all individual experiences?

The researchers also found that in organising the information based on related memories, patterns of activation that related to details of a specific memory diminished over time.

In this study participants learned a series of object-scene associations. They viewed several induvial objects on a computer screen like a tennis racquet for example, and each object paired with pictures of four repeating scenes such as a beach scene.

The researchers then tested the participant’s ability to match the objects with the scene immediately after the experiment and then one week later.

During these recall periods, the researchers studied the participants’ neural patterns of activation associated with individual memories.

The researchers found that immediately after the experiment there was no noticeable overlap in the pattern of activation associated with memories for objects paired with the same scene.

But one week later, the activation patterns were more overlapping in the hippocampus and its medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) – regions of the brain.
This shows that over time the brain had organised information based on their overlap.

The researchers also found that in organising the information based on related memories, patterns of activation that related to details of a specific memory diminished over time.

This finding suggests that the brain re-organises individual distinct experiences into information clusters and structured knowledge. This also shows that memories transform over time losing specific details of a particular memory and being clustered with other similar experiences.

Just like an efficient filing system, our brain organises and stores information based on similarities – perhaps signalling the emergence of conceptual knowledge.

But the trade-off for such efficiency is the loss of details of our precious memories.

Source: Neuron