Sayak Banerjee, Amity University Kolkata
Neuroscientists at UCL Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research initiated a new perception of the unknown functions of memory. Thereby, raising questions like “how the inner GPS of the brain is supported by memories”. They used laser beams to activate the neurons and recorded the activity of the ‘place cells’ in mice as they traversed a virtual reality environment. Place cells are hypothesized to depict a cognitive map of the environment. Similar to an inner GPS, they retain the ability to locate.
The UCL scientists used neurons by fixing calcium sensors in it. They lit up when the neurons are active and secondly the same neurons were expressed with light-sensitive ‘optogenetic’ proteins. While mice were directing towards a particular location inside the virtual world to collect a sugar-water reward, targeted activation of place cells in their hippocampus was being monitored. The activity of numerous hippocampal place cells was optically recorded, out of which certain cells were found to be active at the rewarded location. Digital holography was then used to activate those specific place cells with laser beams in different locations of the virtual world.
The animal ‘mentally teleports’ due to the stimulation of neurons with light leading them to act as though they were in that rewarded location. Thus, it was demonstrated how the place cell activation allows us to recoup the memories of our environment and aids us in navigation. The results yield deeper knowledge of how memories are stored. Scientists believe that this discovery could help provide new remedies for conditions that affect memory such as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
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Source: “Targeted Activation of Hippocampal Place Cells Drives Memory-Guided Spatial Behavior” by Nick T.M. Robinson, Lucie A.L. Descamps, Lloyd E. Russell, Moritz O. Buchholz, Brendan A. Bicknell, Georgy K. Antonov, Joanna Y.N. Lau, Rebecca Nutbrown, Christoph Schmidt-Hieber, and Michael Häusser, 6 November 2020, Cell.DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.09.061
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