In our experiment, we were interested in how and why the mPFC and HC work at the same rhythm to help solve memory problems. Cells firing out of rhythm are like an instrument joining into a song off-beat and disrupting the whole song.ĭifferent parts of the brain working together are like friends playing a game of jump rope or a band of musicians playing a song.
However, sometimes these same neurons in the mPFC are not on-beat with the hippocampal theta rhythm, so they fire out of sync and information is not shared with the HC. When we talk about the mPFC working at the same beat as the hippocampal theta rhythm, we mean the mPFC cells are firing in sync with this rhythm. When neurons share information with other neurons, we call this firing-a process where cells in the brain send (fire) electrical impulses to other brain cells. This is like the example we gave of your friend needing to jump on-beat in the jump-rope game. You can see the locations of the mPFC and the HC are similar in the brains of humans and rats.įor two brain areas to share information, the neurons (nerve cells) in those areas need to send messages on-beat. In both brains, the mPFC is colored red, while the HC colored blue.Figure 2 - Location of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and hippocampus (HC) in a human brain and a rat brain.You can think of the theta rhythm as the beat of a song or the swings of a jump rope. The rhythm these two areas share is called the hippocampal theta rhythm. The mPFC holds information we might need in the near future for solving problems (like remembering what something looks like) while the HC helps remember where things are. Figure 2 shows where the mPFC (in red) and HC (in blue) are located in a human brain and in a rat brain. In this article, we talk about a part of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) that can work, or “play” at the same rhythm as another part of the brain called the hippocampus (HC). These brain processes allow us to see, hear, feel, think, and move. Just like separate musicians in a band play different instruments and then add the sounds together to make a song, separate parts of the brain process different types of information and then add the data together to complete tasks, such as remembering where things are, successfully.
Brain areas process information by keeping everything in rhythm. For an instrument to join in to the song, it must follow the beat likewise, for your friend to join in the game of jump rope, he must jump in at the right time. For multiple instruments and vocals to come together to form a good song, they all must be in rhythm. If, however, your friend does jump at the same rhythm, you and your friend can continue going up and down at the same time, and the game will last as long as you continue to jump together.Īnother way to think about the jump-rope game is that it is like the beat of a song. If he does not jump at the same rhythm as you, then your friend will trip over a rope and cause the game to stop (see Figure 1B). so the game ends.Īnother friend wants to join your game and tries to jump in. The boy wearing the red shirt joins the game but does not jump at the same rhythm as the girl jumping in A.
The girl wearing the blue dress and the boy with the yellow shirt are spinning the ropes in rhythm, so that the girl wearing the purple shirt can jump up and down. The game is continuing because you are jumping at the same rhythm that your friends are turning the ropes (see Figure 1A). Every time you go down, the ropes are above you. Every time you jump up, a rope goes under your feet. Two of your friends are turning the ropes as you jump in the middle. Imagine you are playing jump rope with your friends. When these two brain areas were synchronized, the rats played the game correctly, but when these two areas were out of sync and thus could not “share” their information, the rats got the problem wrong and did not play the game correctly. We found that two parts of the brain, called the medial prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, had to work together in order for the rats to play the game correctly. We were interested in how information was shared between brain areas while rats played a memory game. To successfully accomplish these tasks, the different parts of the brain need to work together to “share” information. Every task we do is broken down into smaller tasks that different parts of the brain are responsible for completing. Different parts of the brain work together to help us solve problems, play, and pay attention in school.
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