AI Article Synopsis

  • Memory is still a big mystery in biology, even though people have been trying to understand it for over a hundred years.
  • A scientist named Richard Semon came up with the idea of the "engram," which is supposed to be special connections in the brain that help us remember things.
  • Now, modern scientists have better tools and knowledge to study memory, and they are sharing their thoughts on what the engram really is today.

Article Abstract

The mechanism of memory remains one of the great unsolved problems of biology. Grappling with the question more than a hundred years ago, the German zoologist Richard Semon formulated the concept of the engram, lasting connections in the brain that result from simultaneous "excitations", whose precise physical nature and consequences were out of reach of the biology of his day. Neuroscientists now have the knowledge and tools to tackle this question, however, and this Forum brings together leading contemporary views on the mechanisms of memory and what the engram means today.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4874022PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12915-016-0261-6DOI Listing

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