Neuronal- and systems-level understanding of spatial and episodic memory.

我们的记忆定义了我们是谁和每天的损失（或？情节？）例如，由于老年痴呆症而导致的记忆力下降？颞叶癫痫或中风，对一个人有毁灭性的影响？这不仅损害了老年人独立生活的能力，而且给照顾者和国家带来了巨大负担。 无论是在健康还是疾病中，通过药物（调节神经元如何创建和存储记忆），技术设备和记忆策略，记忆都有巨大的潜力得到改善。然而，我们目前对记忆过程的理解水平意味着，我们离能够充分利用这些干预措施还有很长的路要走。至关重要的是，我们对分子和细胞水平（神经元水平）的记忆过程的理解与整个大脑（系统水平）细胞群的活动之间存在差距。这项研究旨在通过详细了解大脑中神经元的行为和相互作用如何产生记忆来弥合这一差距。大部分研究集中在空间记忆上，可以从动物和人类那里收集可比数据。通过开创性地使用虚拟现实来测试真实大规模环境中的记忆，我们已经证明，人类和动物使用类似的神经元表征来寻找它们的路，并且可以根据大脑中神经元的行为来理解事物的记忆。由于空间记忆丧失是AD的一个突出和早期特征，因此这些发现将直接与理解和监测这种疾病的进展有关。理解大脑记忆事件空间背景的基本神经机制不仅本身是一项挑战，而且还将对医学和治疗科学的进步产生连锁反应。例如，它可以帮助我们理解当一个新事件发生时，新的记忆是如何被触发的，以及这可能会出错，从而导致记忆丢失，以及这种丢失如何通过药物来避免。再举一个例子，我们将检验创伤后应激障碍中不想要的侵入性记忆之所以会发生，是因为与创伤事件相关的景象、声音和感觉的表征与它们发生的特定背景的表征脱节了。

Our memories define who we are and the loss of day-to-day (or ?episodic?) memory, for example as a result of Alzheimer?s disease (AD), temporal lobe epilepsy or stroke, has a devastating impact on one?s capacity to live independently and places a huge burden on caregivers and the state. There is an enormous potential for memory to be improved, both in health and disease, via drugs (which modulate how neurons create and store memories), technological devices and memory strategies. However, our current level of understanding of memory processes means that we are a long way from being able to fully utilize these interventions. Critically, there is a gap between our understanding of memory processes at the level of molecules and cells (the neuronal level) through to the activity of populations of cells throughout the brain (the systems level). This research is aimed at bridging this gap by providing a detailed understanding of how the actions and interactions of neurons in the brain gives rise to memory. Much of the research focusses on spatial memory, where comparable data can be collected from animals and humans. By pioneering the use of virtual reality to test memory in realistic large-scale environments we have shown that similar neuronal representations are used by humans and animals to find their way around, and that it is possible to understand memory for where things are in terms of the actions of neurons within the brain. Because loss of spatial memory is a prominent and early feature of AD, the findings will be directly relevant to understanding and monitoring the progression of this disease. As well as being a challenge in its own right, understanding the basic neuronal mechanisms by which the brain remembers the spatial context of events, will also have knock-on effects for the progress of medical and therapeutic science. For one example, it can help us to understand how new memories are triggered when a novel event occurs, and how this might go wrong so that memories are lost, and how such loss might be avoided by drugs. For another example, we will test the idea that unwanted intrusive memories in posttraumatic stress disorder occur because the representations of the sights, sounds and feelings associated with a traumatic event have become disconnected with the representations of the specific context in which they occurred.