A cell in the brain region called the hippocampus, which contains neurons that can encode information about elapsed time. Credit: Robert McNeil, Baylor College of Medicine/SPL
Neuroscience
The ‘time neurons’ that help the brain keep track
To recall a past experience, we need to piece together when specific events happened and in what order. Now, scientists have confirmed that humans have “time neurons” that encode this information.
Rodents have long been known to have time-keeping cells in the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped brain structure that has an essential role in memory. To look for similar cells in humans, Leila Reddy at the French national research agency CNRS in Toulouse and her colleagues recorded electrical activity in the hippocampal neurons of volunteers while the volunteers memorized a series of images and were quizzed, periodically, on which image came next in the sequence.
The researchers pinpointed a subset of neurons that fired one after the other during the approximately 6.5-second intervals between quizzes. These neurons showed similar patterns of activity during gaps when participants stared at a blank screen, suggesting that they were encoding time, rather than other information about the task.
The team was also able to decode the firing patterns of groups of time neurons to retrieve the identity of the specific time periods they encoded — affirming the neurons’ role as timekeepers in the brain.
"time" - Google News
June 30, 2021 at 09:25PM
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The 'time neurons' that help the brain keep track - Nature.com
"time" - Google News
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