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Memory

·July 17, 2025·7 min read

How the Brain Selects Between Perception and Memory

The brain constantly toggles between focusing on external sensory information and internal mental representations like memories, plans, and thoughts. This seamless switching is crucial for adaptive behavior, yet the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience Psychology

·July 15, 2025·7 min read

Tiny Brain Region Orchestrates How We Segment and Remember Life Events

Our memories don’t flow like a continuous stream—they’re divided into meaningful events, thanks to a tiny brain region called the locus coeruleus. New research shows this region acts like a “reset button,” activating at event boundaries to signal the hippocampus to store distinct memories.

Featured Neuroscience

·July 15, 2025·3 min read

Hippocampus and Insula Team Up to Encode Emotional Memories

A new study explored how the hippocampus and insula interact during the encoding of emotional memories in humans. Sixteen participants with implanted electrodes viewed emotionally valenced words and attempted to recall them while neural activity was recorded.

Featured Genetics Neuroscience

·July 11, 2025·5 min read

Protein Found to Strengthen Brain Cell Connections for Memory

Scientists have identified how the brain protein cypin helps maintain strong connections between neurons, a discovery with implications for treating brain injuries and neurodegenerative diseases. Cypin ensures proper protein tagging at synapses, allowing neurons to communicate effectively and support memory and learning.

Featured Neuroscience

·July 10, 2025·5 min read

Memory Chooses Meaning Over Surface Similarities

Memory helps us make sense of the present by retrieving past experiences based on either surface-level similarities or deeper conceptual connections. A new study reveals that when a familiar mental category — like excuses or conflicts — is available, memory prioritizes structural, abstract links over superficial cues.

Featured Neuroscience

·July 10, 2025·8 min read

How the Brain Replays and Compresses Memories

New research shows how the brain replays and organizes memories, even compressing long experiences into short, fixed-length neural sequences. Scientists recorded hundreds of hippocampal neurons in freely flying bats to study phenomena called neural replay and theta sequences, previously observed only in rodents.

Featured Neuroscience

·July 8, 2025·8 min read

The Brain Weaves Time Into Memories With Unique Neural Bookmarks

Our brain doesn’t just record time—it organizes our lives into distinct, memorable moments. New research reveals that neurons in the lateral entorhinal cortex generate unique “jumps” in activity when something meaningful happens, creating bookmarks that structure our experiences.

Featured Neuroscience

·July 7, 2025·1 min read

Positive Emotions Boost Memory

A new study shows that positive emotions can enhance memory, even for meaningless information. Researchers recorded brain activity as participants viewed neutral squiggles paired with positive, neutral, or negative emotional images.

Featured Genetics Neuroscience

·July 5, 2025·4 min read

Human Brains Keep Making Memory Neurons in Adulthood

A groundbreaking study shows that the human hippocampus continues producing new neurons well into late adulthood. Researchers identified neural progenitor cells—the precursors to neurons—in adults up to 78 years old, confirming ongoing neurogenesis in the memory center of the brain.

Featured Neuroscience

·June 30, 2025·4 min read

Songs Trigger Faster, Stronger Personal Memories

New research shows that full songs are far more effective than spoken lyrics in evoking personal memories. By comparing reactions to popular pop songs and spoken-word versions, researchers found that music helps anchor memories to specific times and emotions.

Featured Neuroscience

·June 29, 2025·8 min read

Brain Criticality May Hold Key to Learning, Memory, and Alzheimer’s

New research proposes a unified theory of brain function based on criticality—a state where the brain teeters between order and chaos, allowing it to learn, adapt, and process information optimally. When the brain strays from this delicate balance, cognitive performance weakens, and neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s may begin to take hold.

Neuroscience

·June 23, 2025·6 min read

Sleep’s Secret Sequence May Sculpt Our Memories Like a Garden

A new theory suggests that the order of sleep phases—non-REM followed by REM—is essential for strengthening and organizing memories. In mice studies and computational models, researchers found that non-REM sleep reinforces new memories, while REM sleep prunes overlapping or irrelevant ones, keeping them distinct.