Engineers at the University of Pittsburgh were able to reproduce the complex pattern of electrical impulses in the brain in a laboratory and see how memory is formed.
For their research, engineers cultured neurons obtained from rat hippocampus, a brain area known to be associated with memory formation, a process that was followed by MRI, which showed that memory is formed when a prolonged electrical activity in the cortex or outer layer.
Similarly, the experts made a crop of proteins on silicon wafers on which placed neurons taken from rats to observe under the microscope and the same neural system seen with resonance.
After a while, proteins and neurons grew and connected to form a neural network electrical activity was maintained for 12 seconds, far more than the time it takes a brain in normal position, which lasts no more than 0.25 seconds, but it was too short to do the analysis.
Henry Zeringue, bioengineering expert and head of the study, explained that the neurons that formed the network not only were able to transmit an electrical impulse, but also could maintain this activity for some time, enough so that these neurons generate memory.
"Neurons are more connected and more interdependent than any other body cell. Not enough to know how a neuron responds to a stimulus, because a network can react differently and even contrary to that expected, "Zeringue said.
According to the expert, the study is a tiny part of what happens in the brain, but a first step toward understanding this process
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