Washington : Ever wondered how you can recall a recent event in a fraction of the time it took you to live it? Scientists may have the answer.
Researchers have discovered a mechanism that may explain how the brain remembers nearly all of what happened on a recent afternoon – or make a thorough plan for how to spend an upcoming afternoon – in a fraction of the time it takes to live out the experience, reports PTI.
The new mechanism compresses information needed for memory retrieval, imagination or planning and encodes it on a brain wave frequency that is separate from the one used for recording real-time experiences. Brain cells share different kinds of information with one another using a variety of different brain waves, analogous to the way radio stations broadcast on different frequencies.
Researchers found that one of these frequencies allows us to play back memories – or envision future activities – in fast forward. “You can plan out those events and think about the sequences of actions you will do. And all of that happens on a faster time scale when you are imagining it than when you actually go and do those things,” said Laura Colgin from the University of Texas in Austin, US.
In the brain, fast gamma rhythms encode memories about things that are happening right now; these waves come rapidly one after another as the brain processes high-resolution information in real time.
