Scientists are working on an implant that should stimulate memory

American scientists are working on a device that can be implanted in the brain and help form memories. By stimulating targeted areas of the brain with electrical pulses, patients with brain damage can be helped.

The research is being led by neuroscientists from Penn University in Philadelphia, Technology Review describes. With their experiments, they want to ensure that people with brain problems, for example due to epilepsy or damage after an accident, are better able to form new memories. In many brain patients, forming new memories is difficult or impossible.

Darpa, the scientific institute of the US Department of Defense, has developed an implant consisting of a number of electrodes that are placed in the brain. They have to adjust the signal flows in the brain, as it were, by delivering electrical pulses in places where necessary. In the study, set up by Penn University, people with epilepsy are fitted with the implant and then followed for two to seven weeks. Among other things, their brain activity is measured, from which it can be deduced how the memory function of the brain functions.

The results of the study are not yet known: the clinical trials are still ongoing. The researchers mainly look at so-called theta oscillations, brain signals that mainly originate from the hippocampus. This is an area of ​​the brain that is very important in forming memories. Stimulating such brain signals appears to help rats with their memory, and the question is whether this also works in humans.

Penn University is not the first to experiment with so-called deep brain stimulation. Implanting electrodes to adjust brain signals is used for a variety of medical problems, including depression and Parkinson’s disease. Often these are still experimental applications.