News tagged with hippocampus
Embryonic stem cell transplant restores memory, learning in mice
For the first time, human embryonic stem cells have been transformed into nerve cells that helped mice regain the ability to learn and remember. A study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the first ...
Medical research
Apr 21, 2013 |
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Going places: Rat brain 'GPS' maps routes to rewards
While studying rats' ability to navigate familiar territory, Johns Hopkins scientists found that one particular brain structure uses remembered spatial information to imagine routes the rats then follow. ...
Neuroscience
Apr 17, 2013 |
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Epilepsy sends differentiated neurons on the run
(Medical Xpress)—The smooth operation of the brain requires a certain robustness to fluctuations in its home within the body. At the same time, its extraordinary power derives from an activity structure ...
Neuroscience
Mar 29, 2013 |
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Portion of hippocampus found to play role in modulating anxiety
Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers have found the first evidence that selective activation of the dentate gyrus, a portion of the hippocampus, can reduce anxiety without affecting learning. ...
Neuroscience
Mar 06, 2013 |
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Novel storage mechanism allows command, control of memory
(Medical Xpress)—Introductions at a party seemingly go in one ear and out the other. However, if you meet someone two or three times during the party, you are more likely to remember his or her name. Your ...
Neuroscience
Mar 05, 2013 |
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Where 'where it's at' is at in the brain: Study in rats identifies region that associates objects and space
Conventional wisdom in brain research says that you just used your hippocampus to answer that question, but that might not be the whole story. The context of place depends on not just how you got there, but ...
Neuroscience
Dec 05, 2012 |
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Research discovers two opposite ways our brain voluntarily forgets unwanted memories
If only there were a way to forget that humiliating faux pas at last night's dinner party. It turns out there's not one, but two opposite ways in which the brain allows us to voluntarily forget unwanted memories, ...
Neuroscience
Oct 17, 2012 |
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Study links hippocampus with unconscious bias
(Medical Xpress)—A new US study into brain function has found links between preferences and the regions of the brain involved in connecting new memories to old ones. The associations formed provide shortcuts ...
Neuroscience
Oct 12, 2012 |
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Discovery of gatekeeper nerve cells explains the effect of nicotine on learning and memory
Swedish researchers at Uppsala University have, together with Brazilian collaborators, discovered a new group of nerve cells that regulate processes of learning and memory. These cells act as gatekeepers and carry a receptor ...
Neuroscience
Oct 07, 2012 |
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Sleeping brain behaves as if it's remembering something, study shows
UCLA researchers have for the first time measured the activity of a brain region known to be involved in learning, memory and Alzheimer's disease during sleep. They discovered that this part of the brain ...
Neuroscience
Oct 07, 2012 |
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Potential new class of drugs protects nerve cells in models of Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Researchers at the University of Iowa and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, have identified a new class of small molecules that block nerve cell death in animal models of Parkinson's disease and ...
Medical research
Oct 01, 2012 |
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The hippocampus as a decision-maker
(Medical Xpress) -- Synapses are modified through learning. Up until now, scientists believed that a particular form of synaptic plasticity in the brain’s hippocampus was responsible for learning spatial ...
Neuroscience
Jul 19, 2012 |
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Weight struggles? Blame new neurons in your hypothalamus
New nerve cells formed in a select part of the brain could hold considerable sway over how much you eat and consequently weigh, new animal research by Johns Hopkins scientists suggests in a study published in the May issue ...
Neuroscience
May 21, 2012 |
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Major study finds memory in adults impacted by versions of four genes
Two research studies, co-led by UC Davis neurologist Charles DeCarli and conducted by an international team that included more than 80 scientists at 71 institutions in eight countries, has advanced understanding ...
Genetics
Apr 15, 2012 |
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New study confirms that mom's love good for child's brain
School-age children whose mothers nurtured them early in life have brains with a larger hippocampus, a key structure important to learning, memory and response to stress.
Psychology & Psychiatry
Jan 30, 2012 |
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Hippocampus
The hippocampus is a major component of the brains of humans and other mammals. It belongs to the limbic system and plays important roles in long-term memory and spatial navigation. Like the cerebral cortex, with which it is closely associated, it is a paired structure, with mirror-image halves in the left and right sides of the brain. In humans and other primates, the hippocampus is located inside the medial temporal lobe, beneath the cortical surface. Its curved shape reminded early anatomists of the horns of a ram (Cornu Ammonis), or a seahorse. The name, in fact, was taken by the sixteenth century anatomist Julius Caesar Aranzi from the Greek word for seahorse (Greek: ιππος, hippos = horse, καμπος, kampos = sea monster).
In Alzheimer's disease the hippocampus is one of the first regions of the brain to suffer damage; memory problems and disorientation appear among the first symptoms. Damage to the hippocampus can also result from oxygen starvation (hypoxia), encephalitis, or medial temporal lobe epilepsy. People with extensive hippocampal damage may experience amnesia—the inability to form or retain new memories.
In rodents, the hippocampus has been studied extensively as part of the brain system responsible for spatial memory and navigation. Many neurons in the rat and mouse hippocampus respond as place cells: that is, they fire bursts of action potentials when the animal passes through a specific part of its environment. Hippocampal place cells interact extensively with head direction cells, whose activity acts as an inertial compass, and with grid cells in the neighboring entorhinal cortex.
Because of its densely packed layers of neurons, the hippocampus has frequently been used as a model system for studying neurophysiology. The form of neural plasticity known as long-term potentiation (LTP) was first discovered to occur in the hippocampus and has often been studied in this structure. LTP is widely believed to be one of the main neural mechanisms by which memory is stored in the brain.
For more information about Hippocampus, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
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