Human brain might reconstruct past events

When remembering something from our past, we often vividly re-experience the whole episode in which it occurred. New UCL research funded by the Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust has now revealed how this might happen in the brain. The study the representation of the entire event can be reactivated in the brain, including incidental information such as where they were and what they did. "When we recall a previous life event, we have the ability to re-immerse ourselves in the experience," explains lead author Dr Aidan Horner (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience). "We remember the room we were in, the music that was playing, the person we were talking to and what they were saying. When we first experience the event, all these distinct aspects are represented in different regions of the brain, yet we are still able to remember them all later on. It is the hippocampus that is critical to this process, associating all these different aspects so that the entire event can be retrieved." The researchers showed that associations formed between the different aspects of an event allow one aspect to retrieve all the other aspects, a process known as 'pattern completion'.