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Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and the University of Southern California (USC) have demonstrated implementation of a prosthetic system that uses a person’s own memory patterns to facilitate the brain’s ability to encode and recall memory. Participants’ short-term memory performance showed 37 percent improvement over baseline measurements. Episodic memory is information that is new and useful for a short period of time while reference memory is information that is held and used for a long time.
The study focused on improving episodic memory, which is the most common type of memory loss in people with Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and head injury. Researchers enrolled epilepsy patients at Wake Forest Baptist who were participating in a diagnostic brain-mapping procedure that used surgically implanted electrodes placed in various parts of the brain to pinpoint the origin of the patients’ seizures.
Using the team’s electronic prosthetic system based on a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) nonlinear mathematical model, the researchers influenced the firing patterns of multiple neurons in the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in making new memories in eight of those patients. They recorded the neural patterns or ‘codes’ while the study participants were performing a computerized memory task.
The patients were shown a simple image, such as a color block, and after a brief delay where the screen was blanked, were then asked to identify the initial image out of four or five on the screen. scientists analyzed the recordings from the correct responses and synthesized a MIMO-based code for correct memory performance.
The patients’ episodic memory performance showed a 37 percent improvement over baseline. In a second test, participants were shown a highly distinctive photographic image, followed by a short delay, and asked to identify the first photo out of four or five others on the screen. The memory trials were repeated with different images while the neural patterns were recorded during the testing process to identify and deliver correct-answer codes. When stimulated with the correct-answer codes, study participants showed a 35 percent improvement in memory over baseline.
This showed that it is possible to tap into a patient’s memory content, reinforce it and feed it back to the patient even when a person’s memory is impaired, it is possible to identify the neural firing patterns that indicate correct memory formation and separate them from the patterns that are incorrect. Correct patterns can be feed in to assist the patient’s brain in accurately forming new memories.
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