Word: hippocampi
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...hippocampus begins to malfunction early in Alzheimer's disease. Imaging studies have shown that people with Alzheimer's typically have smaller than average hippocampi. Meanwhile, as the hippocampus is shrinking, the pathway between it and the prefrontal cortex also begins to degrade. Signals peter out and fade away, and questions take their place: Do I know you? Who am I? But it's not just with Alzheimer's: the hippocampus also goes at least somewhat awry in normal memory loss. "It's relatively stable in volume till about 60," Harvard neuroscientist Randy Buckner explains, "and then begins to change. People...
Using several different types of brain scans, Pruessner has shown that people who test below average on self-esteem also tend to have smaller-than-average hippocampi. The differences become clear only when you compare groups of people, Pruessner notes, so you can't look at any single person's brain scan and determine whether he or she has low self-esteem. But when you look at overall results, they suggest that a smaller hippocampus simply has more trouble persuading the rest of the brain to turn off the stress response...
...even if the rats are honing their maze-running skills by re-living earlier experiences in their hippocampi, it doesn't mean they are dreaming in the way humans understand...
...study published in an October issue of Science, Stickgold had a group of people with normal memory function and a group of amnesiacs, who have damage to their hippocampi, play Tetris over a period of days...
Most researchers agree that the limbic, or feeling brain plays a key role in long-term memory. The limbic system is concerned with affects-strong emotional experiences, for example-which people obviously remember. One part of the limbic system, the hippocampus, is indisputably vital to memory. Patients whose hippocampi have been destroyed or partially removed cannot recall new information. Dr. Robert Livingston of the University of California at San Diego postulates that the structure plays the same role in memory as the "now store" button does on a computer, determining whether a particular bit of information is to be stored...
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