Memories are electrical impulses. Every time we learn something, certain connections are created in our brain between neurons called excitatory, but how does our brain harmonize so as not to collapse due to learning? . A team of scientists from the University of Oxford (United Kingdom) has proposed a new theory about the formation of memories: anti-memories.
According to the researchers, these anti-memories would represent the connections between neurons that generate a completely opposite pattern to the original electrical activity of memory and learning.
What use do they have in our brain?
Measure, harmony. The balance of electrical activity in the brain is due to the interaction of excitatory (causing brain activity) and inhibitory (suppressing) neurons. And it is that a constant activation of excitatory neurons would be related to diseases such as schizophrenia, autism or epilepsy, since they cause exaggerated activity. Hence, to stabilize the system, inhibitory connections enter the scene. These are anti-memories that do not destroy the originals but do calm and normalize the system.
Thus, the excitatory connections are balanced with inhibitory connections of the same intensity that are nothing but replicas of memories, hence they have been described as “anti-memory”. According to Helen Barron, leader of the study that collects the journal Neuron , this debate of neurons allows memories to be saved and that we can access them when necessary, but also silence them – so we do not forget them – when it is not convenient .
