Word: hippocampus
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...series of elegant experiments, Smith and her collaborators showed that this temporary learning deficit could be traced to a remarkable change that occurs at puberty in the hippocampus, a region of the brain that is involved in remembering places and integrating other kinds of learning. The change affects the GABA neurotransmitter system. GABA, which is present in all mammals, inhibits or down-regulates nerve signals, as opposed to exciting them; this calming, relaxing system is activated by tranquilizers like Valium and the popular sleep drug Ambien, which attach to GABA receptors and act similarly to GABA. But at puberty, female...
...that regulates mood, and were shown to be less anxious and stressed than the rats that were not allowed to exercise. Exercise, in a sense, is a natural antidepressant. Other scientific research has also shown that exercise increases the development and maintenance of brain cells, as well as the hippocampus, the part of the brain necessary for memory...
...purpose of the scans was to compare the relative levels of spontaneous neural activity in two key brain regions involved in memory - the hippocampus and visual cortex - during rest, both before and after the visual tasks. The NYU team noticed that levels of activity in the two areas were more closely correlated several minutes after people had looked at the images than before they started the experiment. That suggests that the visual-learning tasks had affected the brain's seemingly random firings during rest, and perhaps that the brain was conducting memory-consolidating activity during that time...
What's more, the more closely correlated the brain activity during the rest period, the better the person performed on the tests of recognition. "We found that higher correlations [of activity in the hippocampus and visual cortex] during rest periods leads to high future memory," notes Arielle Tambini, a graduate student in Davachi's lab and lead author of the paper...
...team found that when volunteers saw names such as Britney Spears, George Clooney, Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe, those who were at the highest risk of developing Alzheimer's - those with both the genetic makeup and a family history - showed high levels of activity in the hippocampus, posterior cingulate and regions of the frontal cortex, all areas involved in memory. The control group showed the opposite pattern. Their brains became more excited when they saw unfamiliar names, which included Irma Jacoby, Joyce O'Neil and Virginia Warfield...