[Neuroscience] Instant replay may help to mould memories

[jason]

(my very small contribution to the group)..
Most of you may have seen this aarticle already but I think it is bloody 
amazing..


http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060206/full/060206-13.html


(heres a small extract)

..."As the rats ran along the track, the nerve cells fired in a very 
specific sequence. This is not surprising, because certain cells in this 
region are known to be triggered when an animal passes through a 
particular spot in a space.

But the researchers were taken aback by what they saw when the rats were 
resting. Then, the same brain cells replayed the sequence of electrical 
firing over and over, but in reverse and speeded up. "It's absolutely 
original; no one has ever seen this before at all," says Edvard Moser, 
who studies memory at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology 
in Trondheim."