{"id":106812,"date":"2020-05-08T19:42:21","date_gmt":"2020-05-09T02:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/how-does-the-brain-link-events-to-form-a-memory-study-reveals-unexpected-mental-processes"},"modified":"2020-05-08T19:42:21","modified_gmt":"2020-05-09T02:42:21","slug":"how-does-the-brain-link-events-to-form-a-memory-study-reveals-unexpected-mental-processes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/how-does-the-brain-link-events-to-form-a-memory-study-reveals-unexpected-mental-processes","title":{"rendered":"How does the brain link events to form a memory? Study reveals unexpected mental processes"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

A woman walking down the street hears a bang. Several moments later she discovers her boyfriend, who had been walking ahead of her, has been shot. A month later, the woman checks into the emergency room. The noises made by garbage trucks, she says, are causing panic attacks. Her brain had formed a deep, lasting connection between loud sounds and the devastating sight she witnessed.<\/p>\n

This story, relayed by clinical psychiatrist and co-author of a new study Mohsin Ahmed, MD, Ph.D., is a powerful example of the brain<\/a>\u2019s powerful ability to remember and connect events separated in time. And now, in that new study in mice published today in Neuron<\/i>, scientists at Columbia\u2019s Zuckerman Institute have shed light on how the brain can form such enduring links.<\/p>\n

The scientists uncovered a surprising mechanism by which the hippocampus, a brain region critical for memory, builds bridges across time: by firing off bursts of activity that seem random, but in fact make up a complex pattern that, over time, help the brain learn associations. By revealing the underlying circuitry behind associative learning, the findings lay the foundation for a better understanding of anxiety and trauma- and stressor-related disorders, such as panic and post-traumatic stress disorders, in which a seemingly neutral event can elicit a negative response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A woman walking down the street hears a bang. Several moments later she discovers her boyfriend, who had been walking ahead of her, has been shot. A month later, the woman checks into the emergency room. The noises made by garbage trucks, she says, are causing panic attacks. Her brain had formed a deep, lasting [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}