- A new study from researchers at the University of Toronto introduces a smartphone app that can reinforce memories of life events.
- The app is designed to benefit people with memory impairment by imitating the function of the hippocampus as it helps consolidate memories.
- The app involves recording life events and replaying them to lock them in as memories.
Our ability to remember life events declines as we age, particularly for people with memory impairment or diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
A new study from researchers at the University of Toronto describes that some people may be able to successfully reinforce their memories through a smartphone-based app.
The app helps by mimicking the behavior of the brain’s hippocampus. Researchers believe that the hippocampus repeatedly replays memories to the rest of the brain at high speed to help stabilize them for long-term recall.
The app is called HippoCamera.
Researchers found that people who used the app for two weeks experienced a 56% increase in their ability to recall the details of events recorded with HippoCamera. People who used it for 70 consecutive days saw an 84% increase.
HippoCamera is available for Apple’s iPhone and iPad, but is not yet functional for non-research use. Its developers expect to open the app to the public soon.
The study appears in PNAS.
Much of who we are as people has to do with our lifetime of memories, perhaps the most lasting possessions we acquire. These memories also constitute the experiences upon which we base the manner in which we interact with the world each day.
People with memory impairment have a harder time navigating the world, with a loss of confidence from an inability to recall how it works. In addition, a person may lose a critical aspect of their identity by forgetting part of who they have been, leading to a sense of isolation from family and friends.
While the HippoCamera helps people recall only those specific memories it has recorded, its value may be broader than that,…
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