Group items tagged

hopes that Number Sense — if it can improve dyscalculia — will help him in the academic debate over the cognitive basis of numeracy.

the interest of the children was to have a fun game full of ideas and variety, and that was not very compatible with an analytic approach

findings provide the first direct neural evidence for the idea that the human memory system tags memories with information about where and when they were formed

this study involved playing a simple video game on a bedside computer

The game in this experiment involved making deliveries to stores in a virtual city

The participants were first given a period where they were allowed to freely explore the city and learn the stores' locations

When the game began, participants were only instructed where their next stop was, without being told what they were delivering

After they reached their destination, the game would reveal the item that had been delivered, and then give the participant their next stop

After 13 deliveries, the screen went blank and participants were asked to remember and name as many of the items they had delivered in the order they came to mind

This allowed the researchers to correlate the neural activation associated with the formation of spatial memories (the locations of the stores) and the recall of episodic memories: (the list of items that had been delivered).

"Having these patients play our games allows us to record every action they take in the game and to measure the responses of neurons both during spatial navigation and then later during verbal recall."

By asking participants to recall the items they delivered instead of the stores they visited, the researchers could test whether their spatial memory systems were being activated

map-like nature of the neurons associated with spatial memory made this comparison possible

During navigation, neurons in the hippocampus and neighboring regions can often represent the patient's virtual location within the town

Using the brain recordings generated while the participants navigated the city, the researchers were able to develop a neural map that corresponded to the city's layout

As participants passed by a particular store, the researchers correlated their spatial memory of that location with the pattern of place cell activation recorded

With maps of place cell activations in hand, the researchers were able to cross- reference each participant's spatial memories as they accessed their episodic memories of the delivered items

given just the place cell activations of a participant

could predict, with better than chance accuracy, the item he or she was recalling

cannot distinguish whether these spatial memories are actually helping the participants access their episodic memories

seeing that this place cell activation plays a role in the memory retrieval processes

Earlier neuroscience research

had suggested the hippocampus has two distinct roles

tracking location information for spatial memory, and

recording events for episodic memory

This experiment provides further evidence that these roles are intertwined