Neuroscientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, have shown that they can improve memory function in human patients by stimulating a strategic area of the brain with electrodes . It is the entorhinal cortex , considered the "door" to the hippocampus, which is the area specialized in forming and storing memories. Specifically, the neurons of the entorhinal cortex function as a kind of key that "decides" which part of the data from daily experience is transformed into information that is permanently stored in memory.
To carry out their experiments, neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried and his colleagues worked with seven epileptic patients who already had electrodes implanted in the brain to treat seizures typical of their disease. And they used them to simultaneously record neural activity as memories were formed. They then tested whether deep brain stimulation with an electric shock improved the ability to remember. And they found that the method worked if the entorhinal cortex was stimulated while the subjects tried to learn important information.
In an article published in The New England Journal of Medicine , researchers suggest that this technique could help treat people with dementia or Alzheimer's. "Losing the ability to remember something that just happened and to form new memories is one of the greatest ills that a human being can suffer," says Fried.
