Theodore Berger, professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, is developing what is essentially an artificial hippocampus. The hippocampus is a part of the brain responsible for long-term memory formation. Berger hopes that his neural implant will benefit those with brain injuries or diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.
Most recently, in a joint study with Wake Forest University, experiments demonstrated that an early prototype of the artificial hippocampus works in the brains of rats. In one of the experiments, researchers had rats learn a task, pressing one lever rather than another to receive a reward. Electrical probes recorded the rats’ brain activity between CA3 and CA1, two regions of the hippocampus largely responsible for converting short-term memory into long-term memory. Researchers next used drugs to block the interaction between CA3 and CA1, which caused the rats to remember what they learned for only 5-10 seconds. The device was activated, and the pharmacologically blocked rats were shown to be able to form long-term memories once again, only this time with the help of the neural implant.
In addition to showing that the device works on artificially handicapped brains, using the device on the brains of normal rats enhanced their memory-forming capabilities as well.
Link at USC: Restoring Memory, Repairing Damaged Brains…
Project Page at the USC Center for Neural Engineering: Neural-Prosthesis.com…
Abstract in Journal of Neural Engineering: A cortical neural prosthesis for restoring and enhancing memory…
Medgadget flashback: A High-Tech Solution for Alzheimer’s
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