Researchers store working memory in brain slices

[nsane.forums]

When it comes to things like image recognition, the human brain can completely outclass the most powerful computers on the market. It's able to dredge up images that are decades old—no bit-rot or obsolete formats in the wetware—in order to identify similarities or perform category recognition tasks. And, even though we have a decent idea of how individual neurons work, scientists are still struggling to understand how these cells manage to store and convey information. A study published over the weekend by Nature Neuroscience describes how researchers were able to track the maintenance of short-term, working memories in the neurons of a rat brain and, in the process, managed to read and write individual bits into a brain slice.

Working memory provides the short-term recall capacity that's essential for many basic tasks—it's where we put a phone number while we're remembering which pocket our cell phone is in, or hold the digits we're carrying while summing a series of numbers. For the most part, these memories are only held for a matter of seconds; we have to engage completely different processes to store them for the long term.

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[Bizarre™]

The brain is complex. No wonder these scientists will have difficulties in their experiment.