Science, Weeklies

Actively avoiding activity

Many students will return to school today and wonder if their minds are prepared to undertake the challenges of a new semester. Luckily, MIT neuroscientists may have detected a key component of memory retention, one that could even be manipulated. Could this discovery aid students in identifying how equipped they are to learn?
The MIT researchers, led by John Gabrieli – the Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Cognitive Neuroscience and a principal investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT – explored activity in the parahippocampal cortex, a specific part of the brain that surrounds the hippocampus. Inspired by the hippocampus’ role in memory making, the team was eager to study the encompassing PHC.
“We know from much evidence that this brain region is important for the formation of new memories and that a particular part of it is especially important for formation of memories about places or spatial locations,” said Gabrieli in an email.
They found that the PHC is far more than a moat for the hippocampus. The more active the PHC was, the less likely subjects were to remember visual images and vice versa.
“There is no doubt that some information is inherently more memorable than other information,” said Mieke Verfaellie, director of the Memory Disorders Research Center at BU. “But we also know that the same information is remembered better some times than other times. It is the latter phenomenon that this study helps explain.”

RECOLLECTION RECONASSIANCE

During an fMRI, subjects were shown 250 color photographs. Later they were shown 500, half of which were images they had already seen, to see how many of the original images their memories had retained. The research team found that less activity in the PHC prior to the subjects viewing of the images meant more images recollected.
Encouraged by the first round of testing, the team conducted a second experiment. In that round, they used a live fMRI scanner, enabling them to watch the changes in each subject’s brain. As they expected based on the previous study, images presented while the PHC was active were not recognized, nor were those viewed while the PHC was inactive.
“This is the first study to show that the state of one’s brain on a moment-to-moment basis has an impact on the ability to learn and remember something,” said Verfaellie. “These findings will generate much interest because of their possible implications for education.”

THE PUZZLING PHC

In his email, Gabrieli wrote, “We can only guess why less activation in this region indicates that a person is better prepared to learn spatial information. Maybe less activation indicates that brain region is less preoccupied with ongoing thinking about locations (this part of the brain is active not only when we see a location but also when we imagine a location) and therefore more available for new learning.”
“The study shows that lower activation prior to exposure to scenes is associated with better learning, but we also know that greater activation during presentation of the scenes is associated with better learning,” Verfaellie hypothesized. “One possibility is that lower activation pre-exposure to a scene indicates that more resources are available for processing that scene when it is presented. So it may indicate that the brain is in an optimal attentional state.”
Howard Eichenbaum, a professor of psychology at BU, expressed his fascination with the PHC’s effect on memory.
“We are currently studying how this and related areas represent information that is stored in memories,” said Eichenbaum.
Similar to Gabrieli, Eichenbaum can only guess as to why less PHC activity allows the brain to retain memories.
Eichenbaum proposes, “One possibility is that a high level of activity reflects ongoing processing of information irrelevant to the new material to be remembered and that would interfere with encoding the new information.”
This discovery may pave the way for tools used in the classroom, such as portable EEG devices for students that will allow them to see if their brain is ready to learn.
“The brain scanning device used in this study is way too large and cumbersome to be useful in the same way used in that study,” Eichenbaum said. “However, one could look for other similar predictabilities of brain activity for memory using neurophysiological methods with EEG recordings.”
As of right now, such a machine is more of a creative idea than it is a reality but it is certainly not impossible.
“There is increasing portability of EEG. Maybe that could work,” wrote Gabrieli.

APPREHENSIVE ABOUT THE APPARATUS

However, even if it is possible, some students might not be interested in its use. Across the board, BU students seem to be uninterested in the idea of a portable EEG.
“I don’t think I would [be interested]. It would be too distracting,” said Kelsey Mulvey, a sophomore in the College of Communication.
“I would probably not buy it. I can generally tell when I am ready to learn and if not, I can always review my notes or the textbook when I am more willing to learn,” said John Snyder, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences.
COM sophomore Virginia Ashe said in an email, “I feel like I’ve learned when I am able to concentrate and learn. I am not really interested in learning when I am least likely to learn/more likely to learn so much as how to keep that concentration stable.”
Ideally, utilizing MIT’s study to improve the way students learn could be less expensive and easier than purchasing a machine.
Verfaellie recommends mental exercises.
“There is a lot to learn about how we can recognize when the brain is optimally prepared for learning,” Verfaellie said. “Ideally, we want to be able to identify not only brain states but also behavioral states that are indicative of being prepared for learning. Once we are able to do that, it may be possible to induce such states, for instance, by means of exercises.”
“I think I would be interested to find out how to be more prepared to remember classes better,” said Rose Milgrom, a senior in COM.
Unfortunately, exercises to calm one’s PHC and allow for better memory retention have yet to be explored.
“That would be great [but] we don’t yet have any idea about that,” wrote Gabrieli.
Eichenbaum suggested, “Since PHC processes scenes and other contextual information, one might think about specific objects without a context [to calm the cortex].”
Memory function consists of much more than just the PHC, but MIT’s study takes the neurological community one step closer to uncovering the mysteries of memory.

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