I was also reading that article. The place cell phenomena has been known for many years. For a long time I've thought that sleep might be used for something other than just down time and cellular repair, and this research does seem to confirm that sleep has some functional role. It's interesting that memories are played back in reverse, which might suggest some form of back-propogation in which the brain is searching for the most likely causes of interesting events.
On 18/12/06, James Ratcliff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Interesting article on how they really exhaustively mapped a rats brain... "The researchers could interpret the memories through electrodes inserted into the rats' brains, including into special neurons in the hippocampus. These neurons are known as "place cells" because each is activated when the rat passes a specific location, as if they were part of a map in the brain. The activation is so reliable that one can tell where a rat is in its cage by seeing which of its place cells is firing." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/18/science/18memory.html?ref=us James Ratcliff _______________________________________ James Ratcliff - http://falazar.com New Torrent Site, Has TV and Movie Downloads! http://www.falazar.com/projects/Torrents/tvtorrents_show.php __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
