Your memory is no video camera: It edits the past with present experiences

Date:
February 4, 2014
Source:
Northwestern University
Rather, the memory rewrites the past with current information, updating your recollections with
new experiences.
Love at first sight, for example, is more likely a trick of your memory than a Hollywood-worthy
moment.
"When you think back to when you met your current partner, you may recall this feeling of love
and euphoria," said lead author Donna Jo Bridge, a postdoctoral fellow in medical social
sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "But you may be projecting
your current feelings back to the original encounter with this person."
The study will be published Feb. 5 in the Journal of Neuroscience.
This the first study to show specifically how memory is faulty, and how it can insert things from
the present into memories of the past when those memories are retrieved. The study shows the
exact point in time when that incorrectly recalled information gets implanted into an existing
memory.
To help us survive, Bridge said, our memories adapt to an ever-changing environment and help
us deal with what's important now.
"Our memory is not like a video camera," Bridge said. "Your memory reframes and edits events
to create a story to fit your current world. It's built to be current."
All that editing happens in the hippocampus, the new study found. The hippocampus, in this
function, is the memory's equivalent of a film editor and special effects team.
For the experiment, 17 men and women studied 168 object locations on a computer screen with
varied backgrounds such as an underwater ocean scene or an aerial view of Midwest farmland.
Next, researchers asked participants to try to place the object in the original location but on a
new background screen. Participants would always place the objects in an incorrect location.
For the final part of the study, participants were shown the object in three locations on the
original screen and asked to choose the correct location. Their choices were: the location they
originally saw the object, the location they placed it in part 2 or a brand new location.
"People always chose the location they picked in part 2," Bridge said. "This shows their original
memory of the location has changed to reflect the location they recalled on the new background
screen. Their memory has updated the information by inserting the new information into the old
memory."

Participants took the test in an MRI scanner so scientists could observe their brain activity.
Scientists also tracked participants' eye movements, which sometimes were more revealing
about the content of their memories -- and if there was conflict in their choices -- than the actual
location they ended up choosing.
The notion of a perfect memory is a myth, said Joel Voss, senior author of the paper and an
assistant professor of medical social sciences and of neurology at Feinberg.
"Everyone likes to think of memory as this thing that lets us vividly remember our childhoods or
what we did last week," Voss said. "But memory is designed to help us make good decisions in
the moment and, therefore, memory has to stay up-to-date. The information that is relevant right
now can overwrite what was there to begin with."
Bridge noted the study's implications for eyewitness court testimony. "Our memory is built to
change, not regurgitate facts, so we are not very reliable witnesses," she said.
A caveat of the research is that it was done in a controlled experimental setting and shows how
memories changed within the experiment. "Although this occurred in a laboratory setting, it's
reasonable to think the memory behaves like this in the real world," Bridge said.

Kepler finds a very wobbly planet: Rapid and erratic changes in seasons
The planet, designated Kepler-413b, precesses, or wobbles, wildly on its spin axis, much like a
child's top. The tilt of the planet's spin axis can vary by as much as 30 degrees over 11 years,
leading to rapid and erratic changes in seasons. In contrast, Earth's rotational precession is
23.5 degrees over 26,000 years. Researchers are amazed that this far-off planet is precessing
on a human timescale.
Kepler 413-b is located 2,300 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. It circles a close pair
of orange and red dwarf stars every 66 days. The planet's orbit around the binary stars appears
to wobble, too, because the plane of its orbit is tilted 2.5 degrees with respect to the plane of the
star pair's orbit. As seen from Earth, the wobbling orbit moves up and down continuously.
Kepler finds planets by noticing the dimming of a star or stars when a planet transits, or travels
in front of them. Normally, planets transit like clockwork. Astronomers using Kepler discovered
the wobbling when they found an unusual pattern of transiting for Kepler-413b.
"Looking at the Kepler data over the course of 1,500 days, we saw three transits in the first 180
days -- one transit every 66 days -- then we had 800 days with no transits at all. After that, we
saw five more transits in a row," said Veselin Kostov, the principal investigator on the
observation. Kostov is affiliated with the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore, Md. The next transit visible from Earth's point of view is not predicted to
occur until 2020. This is because the orbit moves up and down, a result of the wobbling, in such
a great degree that it sometimes does not transit the stars as viewed from Earth.
Astronomers are still trying to explain why this planet is out of alignment with its stars. There
could be other planetary bodies in the system that tilted the orbit. Or, it could be that a third star
nearby that is a visual companion may actually be gravitationally bound to the system and
exerting an influence.
"Presumably there are planets out there like this one that we're not seeing because we're in the
unfavorable period," said Peter McCullough, a team member with the Space Telescope Science
Institute and Johns Hopkins University. "And that's one of the things that Veselin is researching:
Is there a silent majority of things that we're not seeing?"
Even with its changing seasons, Kepler-413b is too warm for life as we know it. Because it
orbits so close to the stars, its temperatures are too high for liquid water to exist, making it
inhabitable. It also is a super Neptune -- a giant gas planet with a mass about 65 times that of
Earth -- so there is no surface on which to stand.
Ames is responsible for the Kepler mission concept, ground system development, mission
operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.,
managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo.,
developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for
Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope
Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is
NASA's 10th Discovery mission and was funded by the agency's Science Mission Directorate.
Researchers have analyzed carbon-rich meteorites (carbonaceous chondrites) and found amino
acids, which are used to make proteins. Proteins are among the most important molecules in

life, used to make structures like hair and skin, and to speed up or regulate chemical reactions.
They have also found components used to make DNA, the molecule that carries the instructions
for how to build and regulate a living organism, as well as other biologically important molecules
like nitrogen heterocycles, sugar-related organic compounds, and compounds found in modern
metabolism.
However, these carbon-rich meteorites are relatively rare, comprising less than five percent of
recovered meteorites, and meteorites make up just a portion of the extraterrestrial material that
comes to Earth. Also, the building-block molecules found in them usually have been at low
concentrations, typically parts-per-million or parts-per-billion. This raises the question of how
significant their supply of raw material was. However, Earth constantly receives other
extraterrestrial material -- mostly in the form of dust from comets and asteroids.
"Despite their small size, these interplanetary dust particles may have provided higher quantities
and a steadier supply of extraterrestrial organic material to early Earth," said Michael Callahan
of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Unfortunately, there have been
limited studies examining their organic composition, especially with regards to biologically
relevant molecules that may have been important for the origin of life, due to the miniscule size
of these samples."
Callahan and his team at Goddard's Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory have recently applied
advanced technology to inspect extremely small meteorite samples for the components of life.
"We found amino acids in a 360 microgram sample of the Murchison meteorite," said Callahan.
"This sample size is 1,000 times smaller than the typical sample size used." A microgram is
one-millionth of a gram; 360 micrograms is about the weight of a few eyebrow hairs. 28.35
grams equal an ounce.
"Our study was for proof-of-concept," adds Callahan. "Murchison is a well-studied meteorite. We
got the same results looking at a very small fragment as we did a much larger fragment from the
same meteorite. These techniques will allow us to investigate other small-scale extraterrestrial
materials such as micrometeorites, interplanetary dust particles, and cometary particles in future
studies." Callahan is lead author of a paper on this research available online in the Journal of
Chromatography A.
Analyzing such tiny samples is extremely challenging. "Extracting much less meteorite powder
translates into having much lower amino acid concentration for analyses," said Callahan.
"Therefore we need the most sensitive techniques available. Also, since meteorite samples can
be highly complex, techniques that are highly specific for these compounds are necessary too."
The team used a nanoflow liquid chromatography instrument to sort the molecules in the
meteorite sample, then applied nanoelectrospray ionization to give the molecules an electric
charge and deliver them to a high-resolution mass spectrometer instrument, which identified the
molecules based on their mass. "We are pioneering the application of these techniques for the
study of meteoritic organics," said Callahan. "These techniques can be highly finicky, so just
getting results was the first challenge."
"I'm particularly interested in analyzing cometary particles from the Stardust mission," adds
Callahan. "It's one of the reasons why I came to NASA. When I first saw a photo of the aerogel
used to capture particles for the Stardust mission, I was hooked."

"This technology will also be extremely useful to search for amino acids and other potential
chemical biosignatures in samples returned from Mars and eventually plume materials from the
outer planet icy moons Enceladus and Europa," said Daniel Glavin of the Astrobiology lab at
Goddard, a co-author on the paper.
This technology and the laboratory techniques that the Goddard lab develops to apply it to
analyze meteorites will be valuable for future sample-return missions since the amount of
sample likely will be limited. "Missions involving the collection of extraterrestrial material for
sample return to Earth usually collect only a very small amount and the samples themselves
can be extremely small as well," said Callahan. "The traditional techniques used to study these
materials usually involve inorganic or elemental composition. Targeting biologically relevant
molecules in these samples is not routine yet. We are not there either, but we are getting there."

New technique could be used to search space

dust for life's ingredients
Researchers have analyzed carbon-rich meteorites (carbonaceous chondrites) and found amino
acids, which are used to make proteins. Proteins are among the most important molecules in
life, used to make structures like hair and skin, and to speed up or regulate chemical reactions.
They have also found components used to make DNA, the molecule that carries the instructions
for how to build and regulate a living organism, as well as other biologically important molecules
like nitrogen heterocycles, sugar-related organic compounds, and compounds found in modern
metabolism.
However, these carbon-rich meteorites are relatively rare, comprising less than five percent of
recovered meteorites, and meteorites make up just a portion of the extraterrestrial material that
comes to Earth. Also, the building-block molecules found in them usually have been at low
concentrations, typically parts-per-million or parts-per-billion. This raises the question of how
significant their supply of raw material was. However, Earth constantly receives other
extraterrestrial material -- mostly in the form of dust from comets and asteroids.
"Despite their small size, these interplanetary dust particles may have provided higher quantities
and a steadier supply of extraterrestrial organic material to early Earth," said Michael Callahan
of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Unfortunately, there have been
limited studies examining their organic composition, especially with regards to biologically
relevant molecules that may have been important for the origin of life, due to the miniscule size
of these samples."
Callahan and his team at Goddard's Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory have recently applied
advanced technology to inspect extremely small meteorite samples for the components of life.
"We found amino acids in a 360 microgram sample of the Murchison meteorite," said Callahan.
"This sample size is 1,000 times smaller than the typical sample size used." A microgram is
one-millionth of a gram; 360 micrograms is about the weight of a few eyebrow hairs. 28.35
grams equal an ounce.
"Our study was for proof-of-concept," adds Callahan. "Murchison is a well-studied meteorite. We
got the same results looking at a very small fragment as we did a much larger fragment from the
same meteorite. These techniques will allow us to investigate other small-scale extraterrestrial
materials such as micrometeorites, interplanetary dust particles, and cometary particles in future
studies." Callahan is lead author of a paper on this research available online in the Journal of
Chromatography A.
Analyzing such tiny samples is extremely challenging. "Extracting much less meteorite powder
translates into having much lower amino acid concentration for analyses," said Callahan.
"Therefore we need the most sensitive techniques available. Also, since meteorite samples can
be highly complex, techniques that are highly specific for these compounds are necessary too."
The team used a nanoflow liquid chromatography instrument to sort the molecules in the
meteorite sample, then applied nanoelectrospray ionization to give the molecules an electric
charge and deliver them to a high-resolution mass spectrometer instrument, which identified the
molecules based on their mass. "We are pioneering the application of these techniques for the

study of meteoritic organics," said Callahan. "These techniques can be highly finicky, so just
getting results was the first challenge."
"I'm particularly interested in analyzing cometary particles from the Stardust mission," adds
Callahan. "It's one of the reasons why I came to NASA. When I first saw a photo of the aerogel
used to capture particles for the Stardust mission, I was hooked."
"This technology will also be extremely useful to search for amino acids and other potential
chemical biosignatures in samples returned from Mars and eventually plume materials from the
outer planet icy moons Enceladus and Europa," said Daniel Glavin of the Astrobiology lab at
Goddard, a co-author on the paper.
This technology and the laboratory techniques that the Goddard lab develops to apply it to
analyze meteorites will be valuable for future sample-return missions since the amount of
sample likely will be limited. "Missions involving the collection of extraterrestrial material for
sample return to Earth usually collect only a very small amount and the samples themselves
can be extremely small as well," said Callahan. "The traditional techniques used to study these
materials usually involve inorganic or elemental composition. Targeting biologically relevant
molecules in these samples is not routine yet. We are not there either, but we are getting there."

Solving a physics mystery: Those 'solitons'

are really vortex rings
The work seeks to clarify what Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers witnessed
when in 2013 they named a mysterious phenomenon -- an unusual long-lived wave traveling
much more slowly than expected through a gas of cold atoms. They called this wave a "heavy
soliton" and claimed it defied theoretical description.
But in one of the largest supercomputing calculations ever performed, UW physicists Aurel
Bulgac and Michael Forbes and co-authors have found this to be a case of mistaken identity:
The heavy solitons observed in the earlier experiment are likely vortex rings -- a sort of quantum
equivalent of smoke rings.
"The experiment interpretation did not conform with theory expectations," said Bulgac. "We had
to figure out what was really happening there. It was not obvious it was one thing or another -thus it took a bit of police work."
A vortex ring is a doughnut-shaped phenomenon where fluids or gases knot and spin in a
closed, usually circular loop. The physics of vortex rings is the same as that which gives stability
to tornadoes, volcanic eruptions and mushroom clouds. (Dolphins actually create their own
vortex rings in water for entertainment.)
"Using state-of-the-art computing techniques, we demonstrated with our simulation that virtually
all aspects of the MIT results can be explained by vortex rings" said Forbes, an UW affiliate
professor who in January became an assistant professor of physics at Washington State
University.
He said the simulations they used "could revolutionize how we solve certain physics problems in
the future," such as studying nuclear reactions without having to perform nuclear tests. As for
neutron stars, he said the work also could lead to a better understanding of "glitches," or rapid
increases in such a star's pulsation frequency, as this may be due to vortex interactions inside
the star.
"We are now at a cusp where our computational capabilities are becoming sufficient to shed
light on this longstanding problem. This is one of our current directions of research -- directly
applying what we have learned from the vortex rings," Forbes said.
The computing work for the research -- one of the largest direct numerical simulations ever -was performed on the supercomputer Titan, at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility in
Tennessee, the nation's most powerful computer for open science. Work was also performed on
the UW's Hyak high-performance computer cluster.
Bulgac and Forbes published their findings in a January issue of Physical Review Letters. Coauthors are Kenneth Roche of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the UW; Gabriel
Wlazowski of the Warsaw University of Technology and the UW; and Michelle Kelley of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Research could bring new devices that

control heat flow
The concept uses tiny triangular structures to control "phonons," quantum-mechanical phenomena
that describe how vibrations travel through a material's crystal structure.
Findings in research using advanced simulations show the triangular or T-shaped structures -- if
small enough in width -- are capable of "thermal rectification," or permitting a greater flow of heat in
one direction than in the opposite direction, said Xiulin Ruan, an associate professor in Purdue
University's School of Mechanical Engineering and Birck Nanotechnology Center.
Rectification has made possible transistors, diodes and memory circuits central to the semiconductor
industry. The new devices are thermal rectifiers that might perform the same function, but with
phonons instead of electrical current.
"In most systems, heat flow is equal in both directions, so there are no thermal devices like electrical
diodes. However, if we are able to control heat flow like we control electricity using diodes then we
can enable a lot of new and exciting thermal devices including thermal switches, thermal transistors,
logic gates and memory," said Ruan, whose research group collaborated with a group led by Yong
Chen, an associate professor in Purdue's Department of Physics and School of Electrical and
Computer Engineering. "People are just starting to understand how it works, and it is quite far from
being used in applications."
Findings are detailed in a research paper that has appeared online in the journal Nano Letters and will
be published in an upcoming issue of the journal. The paper was authored by doctoral students Yan
Wang, Ajit Vallabhaneni and Jiuning Hu and former doctoral student Bo Qiu; Chen; and Ruan.
The researchers used an advanced simulation method called molecular dynamics to demonstrate
thermal rectification in structures called "asymmetric graphene nanoribbons." Molecular dynamics
simulations can simulate the vibrations of atoms and predict the heat flow in a material.
Graphene, an extremely thin layer of carbon, is promising for applications in electronics and
computers. The triangular structure must be tiny in width to make possible the "lateral confinement"
of phonons needed for the effect. Findings also show thermal rectification is not limited to graphene
but could be seen in other materials in structures such as pyramidal, trapezoidal or T-shaped designs.
Hu, Ruan, and Chen also published a paper four years ago in the journal Nano Letters, among the
first to propose asymmetric graphene nanoribbons as a thermal rectifier in research using the
molecular dynamics simulations. Although numerous studies have been devoted to this topic since
then, until now researchers did not know the mechanism behind thermal rectification. The new
findings show that this mechanism works by restricting vibrations as they travel through the small
lateral direction of an asymmetrical structure.
"We demonstrate that other asymmetric materials, such as asymmetric nanowires, thin lms, and
quantum dots of a single material can also be high-performance thermal rectiers, as long as you

have lateral confinement," Ruan said. "This really broadens the potential of this rectification to a
much wider spectrum of applications."
Thermal rectification is not seen in larger triangular-shape structures because they lack lateral
confinement. In order for lateral confinement to be produced, the cross section of the structure must
be much smaller than the "mean free path" of a phonon, or only a few to hundreds of nanometers
depending on the material, Wang said.
"This is the average distance a phonon can travel before it collides with another phonon," he said.
However, although the devices must be tiny, they could be linked in series to produce larger
structures and better rectification performance.
The concept could find uses in "thermal management" applications for computers and electronics,
buildings and even clothing.
"For example, on a winter night you don't want a building to lose heat quickly to the outside, while
during the day you want the building to be warmed up by the sun, so it would be good to have
building materials that permit the flow of heat in one direction, but not the other," Ruan said.
A potential, although speculative, future application could be thermal transistors. Unlike
conventional transistors, thermal transistors would not require the use of silicon, are based on
phonons rather than electrons and might make use of the large amount of waste heat that is already
generated in most practical electronics, said Chen.

Eyemusic sensory substitution device enables

the blind to 'see' colors and shapes
Currently SSDs are not widely used within the blind community because they can
be cumbersome and unpleasant to use. However, a team of researchers at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed the EyeMusic, a novel SSD that
transmits shape and color information through a composition of pleasant musical
tones, or "soundscapes." A new study published in Restorative Neurology and
Neuroscience reports that using the EyeMusic SSD, both blind and blindfolded
sighted participants were able to correctly identify a variety of basic shapes and
colors after as little as 2-3 hours of training.
Most SSDs do not have the ability to provide color information, and some of the
tactile and auditory systems used are said to be unpleasant after prolonged use. The
EyeMusic, developed by senior investigator Prof. Amir Amedi, PhD, and his team
at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC) and the Institute
for Medical Research Israel-Canada at the Hebrew University, scans an image and
uses musical pitch to represent the location of pixels. The higher the pixel on a
vertical plane, the higher the pitch of the musical note associated with it. Timing is
used to indicate horizontal pixel location. Notes played closer to the opening cue
represent the left side of the image, while notes played later in the sequence
represent the right side. Additionally, color information is conveyed by the use of
different musical instruments to create the sounds: white (vocals), blue (trumpet),
red (reggae organ), green (synthesized reed), yellow (violin); black is represented
by silence.
"This study is a demonstration of abilities showing that it is possible to encode the
basic building blocks of shape using the EyeMusic," explains Prof. Amir Amedi.
"Furthermore, the success in associating color to musical timbre holds promise for
facilitating the representation of more complex shapes."
In addition to successfully identifying shapes and colors, users in the new
EyeMusic study indicated they found the SSD's soundscapes to be relatively
pleasant and potentially tolerable for prolonged use. "In soundscapes generated
from images," notes Prof. Amedi, "there is a tendency for adjacent frequencies to
be played together. Using a semitone western scale would then generate sounds
that are perceived as highly dissonant. Therefore, to generate more pleasant

soundscapes, we used the pentatonic musical scale that generates less dissonance
when adjacent notes are played together."
While this new study shows that the EyeMusic can enable the visually impaired to
extract visual shape and color information using auditory soundscapes of objects,
researchers feel that this device also holds great promise for the field of visual
rehabilitation in general. By providing additional color information, the EyeMusic
can help facilitate object recognition and scene segmentation, while the pleasant
soundscapes offer the potential of prolonged use.
"There is evidence suggesting that the brain is organized as a task-machine and not
as a sensory machine. This strengthens the view that SSDs can be useful for visual
rehabilitation, and therefore we suggest that the time may be ripe for turning part
of the SSD spotlight back on practical visual rehabilitation," Prof. Amedi adds. "In
the future, it would be intriguing to test whether the use of naturalistic sounds, like
music and human voice, can facilitate learning and brain processing relying on the
developed neural networks for music and human voice processing."
Additionally, the researchers hope the EyeMusic can become a tool for future
neuroscience research. "It would be intriguing to explore the plastic changes
associated with learning to decode color information for auditory timbre in the
congenitally blind, who never experience color in their life. The utilization of the
EyeMusic and its added color information in the field of neuroscience could
facilitate exploring several questions in the blind with the potential to expand our
understanding of brain organization in general," concludes Prof. Amedi.

First evidence of common brain code for

space, time, distance
The findings, which help reveal how our brains organize information and create
our perspective of the world, appear in the Journal of Neuroscience.
The researchers looked at whether there is an overlap, or a common mechanism, in
the brain areas used to represent time, space and social distances. They used fMRI
to analyze the brain patterns of participants while they viewed objects
photographed at different distances, viewed photos of friends or acquaintances and
read phrases referring to the immediate or more remote future.
"The results showed that the same brain patterns that decide whether something is
physically near to us versus far away also decide whether we are thinking about the
near or distant future or seeing a friend versus an acquaintance," said senior author
Thalia Wheatley, an associate professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences. "In
other words, there is a common neural code for space, time and social distance.
Near, now and dear (friends) activate one pattern and far, later and acquaintance
activate a different pattern.
"There are interesting implications for this," she said. "For one, it suggests why we
use distance metaphors to talk about time and friendship -- for example, close
friends and distant relatives. These metaphors stick because they echo the very
neural computations involved. Our brains use distance to understand time and
social connectedness. This mapping function may have a particularly important
benefit in determining whether we care enough to act: Is something happening
here, now, to someone I love? Or over there, years from now, to a stranger?"