This article was first published in the August 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online "Memory is central to who we are and what we do," says Eleanor A Maguire, professor of neuroscience at UCL and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging. "It is the basis of our culture and we would not have society without our shared memories."
Her research into how memory works has brought her focus to the hippocampus, which is located in the temporal lobe of the brain. "We were able to predict or decode exactly which specific autobiographical memory a person was recalling just by looking at the pattern of functional MRI activity in the hippocampus," she says. Her next question: how do these memories get there?
Previous memory research has typically assumed memory is separate from the rest of cognition, says Maguire, but she sees the two as being inextricably linked -- referring to studies of patients with amnesia who can no longer create visual scenes. "They are literally stuck with what's in front of their eyes. They have no past, no future and no imagination," she says. "They can't even visualise what's behind them or what might be just around the corner."
Maguire is now looking for new approaches in tackling degenerative brain conditions such as Alzheimer's as well as optimising healthy brain performance. Through her current study MEMO (multifaceted examination of memory and its origins), which will gather MRI data from hundreds of volunteers, she aims to understand how memories are formed, represented and recollected by the brain -- and why some of us might be better at it than others.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
