How Your Brain Distinguishes Memories From Perceptions

Neuroscience used to be confident that the brain produced memory and perception in different ways. The 1990s showed that parts of the brain that were thought to be inactive only during sensory perception are actually active during the recall of memories.

Sam Ling is an associate professor of neuroscience and director of the visual neuroscience lab at Boston University. Is it possible that our memory of a beautiful forest glade is just a re-creation of the neural activity that allowed us to see it?

Christopher Baker is an investigator at the National Institute of Mental Health who runs the learning and plasticity unit. The pendulum swung from one side to the other.

We know that memories and experiences can't be the same, even if there is a strong similarity. Serra Favila is the lead author of a recent Nature Communications study. At least one of the ways in which memories and perception of images are different at the neurological level has been identified by her team.

The spots are blurry.

When we look at the world, visual information is sent from the back of the eye to the front of the brain. Each group adds new levels of complexity to the image: simple dots of light turn into lines and edges, then shapes, then complete scenes that embody what we're seeing.

In the new study, the researchers focused on a feature of vision processing that is very important in the early groups of neuron. The brain will create a distorted image if the images are not in the correct places.

Participants were trained to memorize four different patterns on a backdrop that looked like a dart board. Each pattern was associated with a color at the center of the board. The participants were tested to make sure they knew the star shape was at the far left position if they saw a green dot. The researchers recorded the participants' brain activity when they remembered the patterns.

The researchers were able to see how the brain scans helped them remember and record where something was. There is a receptive field in the lower left corner of your vision. Favila said that a neuron only fires when something is placed in it. It's easy to detect activity in brain scans if there's a cluster of them.

There are small receptive fields in the early levels of processing and larger ones in later levels. It makes sense because the higher-tier neurons are drawing in signals from the lower-tier ones. The bigger receptive field creates an effect like putting a large blob of ink over North America on a map to indicate New Jersey It is a matter of small dots evolving into larger, blurrier, but more meaningful blobs.