Brain Cells ‘Geotag’ Memories To Cache What Happened — And Where

In SoundMind Blog by Hannah McLane

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Think back to an important event in your life: a graduation, a birth, a special Thanksgiving dinner. Chances are you’re remembering not only what happened, but also where it happened. And now scientists think they know why.

As we form so-called episodic memories, the brain appears to be using special cells in the hippocampus to “geotag” each event, researchers report in Science. The process is similar to what some digital cameras do when they tag each picture with information about where the image was taken.

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