当我们记忆时，单个神经元会针对特定的记忆

Individual Neurons Target Specific Memories When We Remember, Study Shows

研究表明，当我们记忆时，单个神经元会针对特定的记忆。

Neuroscientists have discovered a curious aspect of how our memory works. When your brain needs to recall information that's related to a specific location, individual neurons can actually target specific memories.

神经科学家发现了我们的记忆如何工作的一个奇怪的方面。当你的大脑需要回忆与特定位置相关的信息时，单个神经元实际上可以针对特定的记忆。

"A key feature of memory is our ability to selectively recall particular experiences even if they occurred in a setting shared with other events," the researchers explain in a new paper.

研究人员在一篇新论文中解释说：“记忆的一个关键特征是我们有选择地回忆特定经历的能力，即使它们发生在与其他事件共享的环境中。”。

"For example, if a person is asked to recommend a tourist itinerary for a city they have visited frequently, they can selectively recall distinct memories of locations from different trips to provide an answer."

例如，如果一个人被要求为他们经常访问的城市推荐一个旅游行程，他们可以有选择地回忆不同旅行地点的不同记忆，以提供答案。

Researchers from several universities including Columbia University in New York and Emory University in Atlanta looked at the individual neurons - which they've dubbed 'memory-trace cells' - of 19 patients undergoing brain surgery for epilepsy.

包括纽约哥伦比亚大学和亚特兰大埃默里大学在内的数所大学的研究人员，研究了被称为“记忆痕迹细胞”的单个神经元——19名接受癫痫手术的患者。

The patients completed a spatial memory task where they were moved along a track in a virtual reality (VR) environment, and asked to press a button when they encountered specific objects (you can watch this process in the video embedded below).

患者完成了空间记忆任务，在虚拟现实(VR)环境中沿着轨道移动，并在遇到特定对象时要求按下按钮(可以在下面嵌入的视频中观看此过程)。

In the recall part of the task, the researchers asked participants to navigate the track and mark the location of an object that had been removed.

在任务的回忆部分，研究人员要求参与者沿着轨迹走，并标记一个被移除的物体的位置。

Although this is a far cry from remembering what you did on your last holiday, the team did find some interesting results.

虽然这与你在上一个假期所做的事情有很大的不同，但团队确实发现了一些有趣的结果。

While looking at the medial temporal lobe (MTL) and in particular the entorhinal cortex, the researchers found that the memory-trace cells were "spatially tuned" to the location, and could then retrieve the location-specific information the person needed to recall.

研究人员在观察内侧颞叶(MTL)特别是内嗅皮层时发现，记忆追踪细胞被“空间调谐”到该位置，然后可以检索到该人需要回忆的特定位置信息。

"Our study demonstrates that neurons in the human brain track the experiences we are willfully recalling and can change their activity patterns to differentiate between memories. They're just like the pins on your Google map that mark the locations you remember for important events," says Salman E. Qasim, a Columbia University biomedical engineer.

“我们的研究表明，人类大脑中的神经元会追踪我们随意回忆的经历，并能改变它们的活动模式来区分不同的记忆。”它们就像你的谷歌地图上的大头针，标记着你记住的重要事件的地点，”哥伦比亚大学生物医学工程师萨尔曼·e·卡西姆(Salman E. Qasim)说。

"This discovery might provide a potential mechanism for our ability to selectively call upon different experiences from the past and highlights how these memories may influence our brain's spatial map."

“这一发现可能为我们提供一种潜在的机制，使我们能够有选择地回忆过去的不同经历，并强调这些记忆可能如何影响我们大脑的空间地图。”

This is all part of our spatial memory, which is responsible for recording information about our environment and how to navigate it.

这都是我们的空间记忆的一部分，它负责记录我们的环境信息以及如何导航。

Past research has already looked into how we can do this, finding that place and grid cells are very important to our spatial memory, working in a similar way to a GPS. Spatial tuning is the idea that individual neurons "activate to represent locations in the environment during navigation".

过去的研究已经探讨了我们如何做到这一点，发现位置和网格单元对我们的空间记忆非常重要，其工作方式与GPS类似。空间调谐是指单个神经元“在导航过程中激活以表示环境中的位置”。

"Previous work proposed that spatially tuned cells remap their firing patterns across different environments, so events that occur in different environments are associated with different spatial maps," the team explains in their study.

研究小组在研究中解释说：“先前的工作提出，空间调谐的细胞会在不同的环境中重新映射它们的发射模式，因此发生在不同环境中的事件会与不同的空间地图相关联。”。

"Building on this work, we proposed that single neurons in the MTL, and particularly in the entorhinal cortex, would exhibit spatial tuning modulated by past experiences."

“在这项工作的基础上，我们提出，MTL中的单个神经元，尤其是内嗅皮层中的神经元，将表现出受过去经验调节的空间调节。”