Category Archives: Memory

June 09

Forget About It

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[En español] In the midst of studying for finals, forgetting is the enemy. You can easily remember the lyrics to your favorite 90s hit, but the names of the 12 cranial nerves elude you. We often think about forgetting as something pathological. We become frustrated by that all too familiar tip-of-your-tongue feeling and in extreme […]

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April 21

Heavy on my Mind: Lead Poisoning (Part II)

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When I first heard about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, I didn’t have the slightest idea how serious the problem was. Sure, I’d heard that lead was no good for you. I thought back to the day I moved into my first apartment in New York City and the superintendent handed me a pamphlet […]

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April 01

The plastic brain

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[En español] We are born with roughly 100 billion neurons, more neurons than we’ll ever have again. It’s still a ton of neurons; they could wrap around the earth 3-4 times. Plus, each of these 100 billion neurons has a couple hundred to thousand connections with other neurons. But as we age, our brains also change. Regions of the brain key for memory […]

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February 11

Through the Nostril Gates to the Past

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[En Español] My very first childhood memory, as much as I can tell, is one of sour feet. It happened during one of the mandatory nap sessions in kindergarten, where everyone slept on little mats barely above the floor. Being inexplicably awake on my side, unaware of the caretaker’s silent patrol behind me, I made […]

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February 13

The Neuroscience of the Spotless Mind

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Although there are undoubtedly even more Valentine’s Day-themed films than there are Shades of Grey, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind stands a cut above the rest. I say this not only as a movie-enthusiast but also as a neuroscience-enthusiast. This film may not be overtly about neuroscience, but it touches on questions and themes that are […]

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January 29

time keeps on slippin’

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A few nights ago I made the mistake of baking lasagna while extremely hungry. Each tick of the timer reverberated inside my skull for what seemed like hours, and the cheese just refused to melt. Later that same night I accidentally stayed up until 2 in the morning absentmindedly watching hours of YouTube videos that […]

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August 22

How Does Exercise Improve the Brain?

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When I started college, my best friend and I started a regular workout schedule to evade the infamous freshman fifteen. The odds were already out of my favor when I started to work at the dining hall right next to my freshman dorm. We were not as intense as Olympic runner Allyson Felix pictured above. […]

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July 31

False Memories and Inception

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Our memories are so dear and essential to our lives that the idea of false memories or that our memories are vulnerable to outside influence seems more than a little unsettling. After all, our memories are critical for not only how we interact with others, but also generating and maintaining our image of self.   The […]

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June 12

Pattern separation gone awry: the dentate gyrus and schizophrenia

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[Image Source: Sebastian Seung via http://connectomethebook.com/.] Since the discovery of patient H.M. in the 1950s (see this post from October 2013), scientists have known that the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped structure located in the medial temporal lobe, is crucial for the successful formation of new memories. The mammalian hippocampus is characterized by several distinct regions, each with […]

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