Scientists watched memories physically forming in the brain.
Learning can change the physical structure of the brain within hours.
The finding is remarkable because neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to reorganise itself — was thought to be a much slower process.
Brain scans have now revealed that areas of the parietal cortex can change within hours.
The findings also suggest that memories are stored locally, rather than in ‘memory banks’.
The study involved people being given a type of brain scan called diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI).
This technique measures how water molecules are arranged in the body.
The neuroscientists used this tool to see how water moved in the brain as people learned new things.
The study’s authors conclude:
“We detected neocortical plasticity as early as 1 hour after
learning and found that it was learning specific, enabled correct recall, and overlapped with memory-related functional activity.These microstructural changes persisted over 12 hours.
Our results suggest that new traces can be rapidly encoded into the parietal cortex, challenging views of a slow-learning neocortex.”
Related
The study was published in the journal Science (Brodt et al., 2018).
