Columbia University researchers have done something quite amazing with groups of neurons, but just how amazing is yet to be understood. Specifically, the investigators were able to stimulate a connected set of neurons in a living mouse to learn to fire together, and then when even one of the set’s neurons was fired later, even up to a day later, the whole ensemble of neurons again flashed as one. This seems to prove a long held hypothesis, originally conceived by psychologist Donald Hebb, that groups of neurons activated together form the core mechanism of how we learn and memorize things.
The feat was achieved using optogenetics, a technique that makes specific neurons in a living animal react to flashes of light. By artificially manipulating the networks of neurons that work as a group, the technique may one day lead to direct methods of treating a whole slew of neurological and psychiatric conditions. Finding the ensembles that work together with respect to specific diseases may be required for this technique to actually be applicable for some conditions.
Here’s video of a group of neurons firing as one. This is what memories actually look like:
Study in Science: Imprinting and recalling cortical ensembles…
Via: Columbia University…