We continue to unravel the mysteries of our brain. Now, a team of scientists from the New York University Center for Neural Sciences (USA) has discovered that memory is based on different time scales that must be available at the same time to be useful; that is, both short-term and long-term memory ‘collaborate’ with each other and are equally important to the way our brains function.
Taking the example of music, when we listen to our favorite song on the radio, we automatically process the short-term memory of the notes and lyrics of the song and relate it to the memories of listening to that same song at various times in the past. . Thus, short and long term memories coexist in the experience we live in the present moment.
The authors precisely compare the formation of long-term memories with the way humans process sound.
“Just as sound is broken down by the auditory system into many discrete receptacles of frequencies that are perceived simultaneously, an experience as a whole is analyzed by the brain in many ‘time windows’ that collectively represent the past,” they explain Thomas Carew and Nikolay Kukushkin, the authors of the study in the journal Neuron.
This process resembles a time hierarchy in which several related ‘time windows’ and information that is remembered work together simultaneously. L memory, therefore, can not be restricted to a defined object or state but and t is structured primarily in terms of tim.
Time, a key factor in the formation of memories
Thus, short and long-term memories do two things at the same time: on the one hand, they preserve information from the past and, on the other, they determine our current perception of events.
The study aimed to give us a better understanding of how memory works in humans. Specifically, a key goal was to understand under what circumstances short-term memory becomes long-term memory.
Research by specialists at New York University suggests that time is a key factor in the formation of memories. And it is that, the brains of many creatures, including human beings, are capable of ‘diffusing’ memories on different time scales. This is why we remember things that happened a long time ago and also those of a few moments ago.
All these time scales are associated with deviations from homeostasis , which are all those phenomena that help balance, the stability of the internal environment of an organism.
According to experts, any departure from this stabilization determines the opening of a new ‘time window’, which closes again once homeostasis is restored. With this, a ‘temporal hierarchy’ of memories is established.
” The changes create a temporal hierarchy of time windows that collectively alter the state of the brain at every instant, ” say the researchers.
Memories then depend on the way in which external stimuli develop over time, adding that “time is the only physical variable that” the brain inherits from the external world. “Memory is free and works with various time scales, making long-term and short-term memories equally important.
“Indeed, the entire biological usefulness of memory is based on the existence of many dimensions of homeostasis, some short-term and some longer-term. The various timescales of memory represent many timescales of experience. passed and must be simultaneously available in the body to be useful, “conclude the authors.
Referencia: Memory Takes Time. Nikolay Vadimovich Kukushkin, Thomas James Care Neuron. 2017. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2017.05.029
