Scientists at the University of Basel have discovered the brain signals for good memory. In the world’s largest functional memory imaging study, they showed that certain brain signals are associated with different memory performance. Until now, it was unclear whether the brain activity of people who are good at remembering information differs from that of people with weaker memory abilities.
To find out, nearly 1,500 study participants, ages 18 to 35, had to look at and remember 72 images. Meanwhile, brain activity was recorded using an MRI. Participants then had to recall as many images from their memory as possible. As the University of Basel announced on Monday, there were large differences in memory performance between the test subjects, as the University of Basel wrote: The researchers found a direct connection between memory performance in certain regions of the brain, both during the storage of information and during later retrieval and brain activity. According to the study, people with better memory performance had greater activation of brain areas such as the hippocampus. These results were published in the journal “Nature Communications”.
“The findings help us better understand how differences in memory performance arise between people,” said lead author Léonie Geissmann. The data obtained is also of great importance for future research that aims to relate biological characteristics, such as genetic markers, with brain signals, according to the researchers. However, a single person’s brain signals would not allow us to draw any conclusions about their memory performance.