Dr. Tandon had patients with implanted electrodes carry out learning tasks that involved both space and time to see how the brain handled the information.
"The way the brain does this, that it accomplishes communication with these two different areas at the same time, is by using two different frequencies coming from the same part of the brain, the hippocampus," he said.
The hippocampus is a structure on the lower side of the brain that regulates the formation of memories that are then stored in separate areas of the brain.
“It is very much like saying that you have a radio station that is sending out signals to two different groups of listeners at the same time and it does that by using two different frequencies,” Tandon said.
At the University of California, Davis, neuroscientist Arne Ekstrom analyzed data from the brain scans -- applying graph theory techniques used to study information flow.
He, Tandon and their colleagues hope to pursue this investigation in future studies.
Since memory loss is one of the problems associated with epilepsy, Dr. Tandon says this research holds promise for epileptics as well.
“We are setting ourselves up for being able to restore memory dysfunction much better than we have with these electrodes in patients with epilepsy and also, potentially, at some point, being able to restore normal network dynamics,” Tandon said.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25