Researchers in
the US have developed an implant to help a disabled brain encode memories,
giving new hope to Alzheimer's sufferers and wounded soldiers who cannot
remember the recent past. The prosthetic, developed at the University of
Southern California and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre in a decade-long
collaboration, includes a small array of electrodes implanted into the brain.
The key to the
research is a computer algorithm that mimics the electrical signalling used by
the brain to translate short-term into permanent memories. This makes it
possible to bypass a damaged or diseased region, even though there is no way of
‘reading’ a memory, decoding its content or meaning from its electrical signal.
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