Until recently, researchers didn’t understand the mechanism for how the brain chooses what to keep. But, in a study recently published in the journal Science, researchers have demonstrated for the first time that during the day the brain goes through a series of steps in an effort to tag certain memories to be stored that night.
Researchers found that when the brain is idle during the day, simultaneous waves of neurons come together in what’s called sharp wave ripples that literally shout to the rest of the brain that this memory is important and needs to be tagged for storage later that evening.
While sharp wave ripples happen less often during the day, their role is crucial because at night a series of 2,000-4,000 sharp wave ripples occur, causing the brain to condense its collection of memories.
It seems that the brain cuts up the experiences that happen druing our day and combines them with other experiences that also occurred. Parts are removed, and thoughts are condensed.
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“Many parts of our waking experience are cut out and bound together with other experiences using this pattern in the hippocampus,” says [lead study author György Buzsáki, the Biggs Professor of Neuroscience at the New York University School of Medicine].
