Hippocampus Content

How Experience Changes Basics of Memory Formation

Andy Fell — July 23, 2018 - 3:04pm

New research from the University of California, Davis, shows that experience also changes the way our neurons become plastic and form new memories.

Using Virtual Reality to Identify Brain Areas Involved in Memory

Andy Fell — January 25, 2018 - 9:50pm

Virtual reality is helping neuroscientists at the University of California, Davis, get new insight into how different brain areas assemble memories in context. In a study published Jan. 18 in the journal Nature Communications, graduate student Halle Dimsdale-Zucker and colleagues used a virtual reality environment to train subjects, then showed that different areas of the hippocampus are activated for different types of memories.

Brain’s Hippocampal Volume, Social Environment Affect Adolescent Depression

Karen Michele Nikos — May 17, 2017 - 9:27am

Research on depression in adolescents in recent years has focused on how the physical brain and social experiences interact. A new University of California, Davis, study, however, shows that adolescents with large hippocampal volume were more, or less, susceptible to feelings of depression depending on how unsafe — or conversely — protected they felt in their home and community environments.

Memory Replay Prioritizes High-Reward Memories

Andy Fell — February 11, 2016 - 3:42pm

Why do we remember some events, places and things, but not others? Our brains prioritize rewarding memories over others, and reinforce them by replaying them when we are at rest, according to new research from the University of California, Davis, Center for Neuroscience, published Feb. 11 in the journal Neuron.

“Rewards help you remember things, because you want future rewards,” said Professor Charan Ranganath, a 51�ԹϺ�� Davis neuroscientist and senior author on the paper. “The brain prioritizes memories that are going to be useful for future decisions.”