Scientists Artificially Create New Memories by Changing the Brain

How reliable are your memories? It turns out that scientists may have discovered a way to artificially alter them by directly manipulating the brain. The findings could allow researchers to better understand and resolve learning and memory disorders.

When we form memories, the structure of our brain alters. The shape of nerve cells change via alterations in the dendritic spines, which are small bulb-like structures that receive electrochemical signals from other neurons. In fact, this isn't the only study that researchers have conducted on memory. Another recent investigation looked at how to erase memories from the brain.

In order to investigate whether physically altering structure could create artificial memories, though, scientists turned to rodents. They first played a certain tone to test the rodents. Then, they stimulated the nucleus basalis deep within the rodents' brains, releasing acetylcholine (ACh)--a chemical involved in memory formation. This procedure increased the number of brain cells that responded to the specific tone.

The next day, the researchers played many sounds to the animals. Surprisingly, they found that the rodents' respiration spiked when they recognized the particular tone. This showed that specific memory content was created by brain changes directly induced during the experiment. These created memories have the same features as natural memories, including long-term retention.

"Disorders of learning and memory are a major issue facing many people and since we've found not only a way that the brain makes memories, but how to create new memories with specific content, our hope is that our research will pave the way to prevent or resolve this global issue," said Norman M. Weinberger, one of the researches, in a news release.

The findings reveal that it's possible to physically alter the brain to produce memories. This could have major implications for future work when it comes to helping those who suffer from learning disorders.

The findings are published in the Journal of Neuroscience.