Our memories are divided into ‘packages’ lasting 125 milliseconds each, and a reminder when we pass from the brain to another rapidly closes and opens a package. According to Norwegian scientists led by May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser of the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience our brain creates maps of the places that view. Every memory is placed in a “package” or records from 125 milliseconds each are then able to move from one package to another quickly and without confusion.
Thanks to this ability of the brain that, for example, when we wake with a start we can, with rare exceptions, recognize at once the place where we are, the brain is ready to “roll” the mental map of the room.
The experiment used by scientists to understand how to organize the memories are really curious. The experts have in fact “teleported” virtually the mice from one room A to room B and have seen how the brains of the animals reacted to this rapid change of environment.
To teleport the scientists used a play of light: that is, changing the lighting in the box they were in the mice, they believed they were instantly projected from chamber A to the B and vice versa.
Mice do not move from where they are but for their brain, which has learned to recognize and distinguish A from B and that has created a memory of each room, the teleportation is “really”. In fact, scientists have found that changing the virtual environment, obtained by playing with the lights immediately in the brains of mice there is the mental map, or more generally, the memory of that environment. The souvenir package may contain a few moments of life, 125 milliseconds, and the brain is very good at passing the package a to package B: can also do this eight times per second.
“We tricked the rats – May-Britt Moser says – of course there is no teleportation, but we have devised a way to make him believe in real”. In fact, by recording brain activity is understood that the mice actually believe we have gone from an environment A to B. And when they teleport to the researchers, the mice feel exactly the same kind of transient confusion that currently does not warn us when we know where we are. But the brain quickly remedied, and never mix with that package A B can have at most a small delay in the switch between memories.
“We are beginning to shed light on the contours and the mechanisms that make up the world of our thoughts,” says May-Britt Moser.
