The ID Report
Post details: Neuroscience: Individual brain cells spotted in act of retrieving memories
09/06/08
Neuroscience: Individual brain cells spotted in act of retrieving memories
by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent
Benedict Carey reports in "For the Brain, Remembering Is Like Reliving" (Los Angeles Times, September 4, 2008) that
Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a spontaneous memory, revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but also, in part, how the brain is able to recreate it.
The recordings, taken from the brains of epilepsy patients being prepared for surgery, demonstrate that these spontaneous memories reside in some of the same neurons that fired most furiously when the recalled event had been experienced. Researchers had long theorized as much but until now had only indirect evidence.
Experts said the study had all but closed the case: For the brain, remembering is a lot like doing (at least in the short term, as the research says nothing about more distant memories).
Of course, th3y are not saying that the memories are in a single neuron:
Yes indeed. Memory, especially when we are old and have a lot of it, is always being edited.Dr. Fried said in a phone interview that the single neurons recorded firing most furiously during the film clips were not acting on their own; they were, like all such cells, part of a circuit responding to the videos, including thousands, perhaps millions, of other cells.
[ ... ]
Single-cell recordings cannot capture the entire array of circuitry involved in memory, which may be widely distributed beyond the hippocampus area, experts said. And as time passes, memories are consolidated, submerged, perhaps retooled and often entirely reshaped when retrieved later.
These results support the approach that Mario Beauregard and Vincent Paquette were working with when they asked Carmelite nuns to recall mystical experiences, as reported in The Spiritual Brain. The nuns' recollections would activate the same circuits that were active when the experience occurred.
Also at The Mindful Hack:
Religion and health: Some teens more, not less, depressed due to religion?
Religion and violence: Do materialist intellectuals have answers?
Reviewer thinks The Spiritual Brain should have been longer?
If you need a book that tries to explain religion and doesn't succeed ...
Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).
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