Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have put forth new evidence suggesting that a single memory is in fact stored across many brain regions rather than just a few.
The study was published in Nature Communications.
According to MIT researchers, numerous brain regions, including the amygdala, cortex, and hippocampus, hold neuronal ensembles that contain memory engrams.
“Here, we report a partial map of the engram complex for contextual fear conditioning memory by characterizing encoding activated neuronal ensembles in 247 regions using tissue phenotyping in mice,” researchers emphasized in their journal report.
“The mapping was aided by an engram index, which identified 117 cFos+ brain regions holding engrams with high probability, and brain-wide reactivation of these neuronal ensembles by recall.”
“In conclusion, this study provides evidence supporting the concept that a memory is stored in a functionally connected engram ensembles’ complex distributed broadly across the brain, consistent with Semon’s unified engram complex hypothesis,” researchers also determined.
