Size region of the brain influences of memory, study shows

A change in one part of the brain help explain why some people have better memories than others and the discovery is helping to better understand mental disorders like schizophrenia, according to authors of research published in the British scientific journal Journal of Neuroscience. Researchers from Cambridge University evaluated 53 volunteers and found differences in the ability to distinguish from memories.

The study found a direct result of the size of an area of ​​the brain called the cortex paracingulate (PCS). This is one of the last regions of the brain that develops before birth and research has shown that people with higher PCS can better discern between real and imagined experiences.

"The differences in memory were amazing. It is exciting to think that these individual variations would have on a simple change in the composition of the brain," says Jon Simons, the lead author.

The 53 volunteers in the study underwent experience that controls if they had shown the presence or absence of PCS in the left or right hemisphere of the brain. The data can also allow a better understanding of schizophrenia, Simons believes, because the inability to recognize what is real or not is aa most notable characteristic of the disease. The hallucinations appear, for example, when someone hears a voice where there is nothing. The difficulty to distinguish the real from the imagined information can explain these hallucinations, the researcher believes.

Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder that affects 24 million worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), but scientists don't yet know the causes.

"We have evidence to suggest this area of ​​the brain would be lower in people with schizophrenia, and perhaps so have hallucinations," says the researcher.
The researchers then showed participants pairs of well-known words, which, on occasions, were completed or deleted. Then they asked volunteers to try to remember the words. Now the researchers want to do further studies to confirm their results.

http://ping.fm/ff2hr