Memory and Neural Mechanisms

How the brain encodes an experience, stores it over time, and later calls it back up are among the most studied questions in neuroscience. Research here focuses on the cellular and circuit-level machinery that makes memory possible, with particular attention to the hippocampus, which supports both the formation of episodic memories and the construction of spatial maps used in navigation, and the amygdala, which tags emotionally charged events through processes like fear conditioning. A central puzzle is how memories are stabilized — and can be briefly destabilized and rewritten — during consolidation and reconsolidation, since understanding these dynamics has direct implications for treating disorders such as PTSD. Active work is also examining how prefrontal circuits selectively retrieve specific memories without interference, and how spatial and episodic memory systems interact to produce a unified sense of context.

Works

75,335

Total citations

3,048,111

Keywords

MemoryHippocampusNavigationAmygdalaNeural CircuitsFear Conditioning