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Tweaking non-neural brain cells can cause memories to fade
βIf we go back to the early 1900s, this is when the idea was first proposed that memories are physically stored in some location within the brain,β says Michael R. Williamson, a researcher at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. For a long time, neuroscientists thought that the storage of memory in the brain was the job of engrams, ensembles of neurons that activate during a learning event. But it turned out this wasnβt the whole picture.
Williamsonβs research investigated the role astrocytes, non-neuron brain cells, play in the read-and-write operations that go on in our heads. βOver the last 20 years the role of astrocytes has been understood better. Weβve learned that they can activate neurons. The addition we have made to that is showing that there are subsets of astrocytes that are active and involved in storing specific memories,β Williamson says in describing a new study his lab has published.
One consequence of this finding: Astrocytes could be artificially manipulated to suppress or enhance a specific memory, leaving all other memories intact.
Googleβs Gemini chatbot now has memory
Googleβs Gemini chatbot can now remember things like info about your life, work, and personal preferences. As flagged by posters on X (and Googleβs official account), a βmemoryβ feature has begun rolling out to certain Gemini users, including this reporter. Like ChatGPTβs memory, Geminiβs adds context to the current conversation. For example, tell Gemini to [β¦]
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