A new model developed by MIT researchers explains how place cells, known for storing spatial memories, can also encode episodic memories, even without a spatial component. The model suggests that place cells and grid cells act as a scaffold to anchor memories as linked series.
Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyJan 16 2025 Nearly 50 years ago, neuroscientists discovered cells within the brain's hippocampus that store memories of specific locations. These cells also play an important role in storing memories of events, known as episodic memories. While the mechanism of how place cells encode spatial memory has been well-characterized, it has remained a puzzle how they encode episodic memories.
MIT Research Scientist Sarthak Chandra and Sugandha Sharma PhD '24 are the lead authors of the study, which appears today in Nature. Rishidev Chaudhuri, an assistant professor at the University of California at Davis, is also an author of the paper. Two hypotheses have been proposed to account for this overlap in function. One is that the circuit is specialized to store spatial memories because those types of memories - remembering where food was located or where predators were seen - are important to survival. Under this hypothesis, this circuit encodes episodic memories as a byproduct of spatial memory.
Related StoriesIn the new model, the researchers hypothesized that grid cells interacting with hippocampal cells can act as a scaffold for storing either spatial or episodic memory. Each activation pattern within the grid defines a "well," and these wells are spaced out at regular intervals. The wells don't store the content of a specific memory, but each one acts as a pointer to a specific memory, which is stored in the synapses between the hippocampus and the sensory cortex.
Neuroscience EPISODIC MEMORY PLACE CELLS GRID CELLS HIPPOCAMPUS SENSORY CORTEX
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