Memory

When it comes to memories of infancy, everyone draws a blank. Hardly anyone can recall those opening pages of life's story, when discoveries write themselves into every newborn's brain. Until recently, brain researchers were convinced that babies simply couldn't make any personal memories that lasted, because almost no one can recollect anything that happened to them before age 3.

COMMERCIAL? What commercial? Television viewers tend to have a poor memory for ads that appear on sex-laced TV shows. At least that's what a new report from University College London suggests. In a study of 60 students, ages 18 to 31, participants viewed one of the following: an episode of "Sex and the City," with sexy advertisements; the same episode with nonsexual ads; a G-rated episode of "Malcolm in the Middle" with sexy ads; and the same "Malcolm" with non-sexual ads.

Just as the smell of watermelon might trigger a recollection of a childhood picnic, the release of odors during deep sleep can help people form new memories, a new study found. Students who received bursts of rose-scented air while they played a memory game and then received similar bursts of smell during deep sleep outperformed others by 15% when they replicated the exercise the following day, according to a study published last week in the journal Science.

THROW out the ginkgo. Forget mnemonics. New research suggests there's a simple way to lock in new info: Sleep on it. Researchers at Harvard Medical School in Boston asked 48 subjects to learn a list of 20 pairs of words and then tested them 12 hours later on their recall of the pairs. Some subjects were taught the words at 9 a.m., while others learned the words at 9 p.m. and then went to sleep.

The products: Some people are born with lightning-quick minds and steel-trap memories. The rest of us -- the ones who instantly forget names and struggle to follow the plot lines of "Law & Order" -- have to carefully cultivate our brainpower. Reading, working on crossword puzzles and regular exercise can all help keep the mind sharp. If you're seeking a quicker mental boost, there's no shortage of pills and supplements that promise to improve memory, focus and overall thinking skills.

Scientists have found evidence that people can actively suppress disturbing memories by choosing to not think about them, a finding that could lead to improved therapies for post-traumatic stress, whose sufferers are haunted by scary memories they can't control.

The myth of modern science, that it proceeds carefully, rationally, incrementally, building bit by bit from rock-solid foundations to impregnable fortresses of fact, comes unraveled in contemporary neuroscience. Fortresses, entire kingdoms of neuroscience have been built on what turn out to be frail premises that get swept away entirely when the next new thing comes along.

Lynch Lab sits between a toll road and the UC Irvine main campus, in an office park of indistinguishable low-rise, beige-on-beige stucco buildings. Neuroscientist Gary Lynch had moved his lab and office -- for a while, just a desk in a hallway -- numerous times during his Irvine career, often as the result of some feud or slight.

Reflecting in the spring of 2005 on his lab's recent successes, which he regarded as a culmination of decades of work, UC Irvine neuroscientist Gary Lynch said: "This will be a moment when all the tribes of neuroscience come to the same campfire." He was wrong. There was no reaction. Nothing. Initially, he couldn't even get a short paper on a crucial visualization experiment published.

Tracing the circuitry of memory in the brain, scientists have found that neurons activated during traumatic experiences also store the memory of those events. The discovery, reported this week in the journal Science, moved researchers a step closer to understanding how information is learned and remembered -- a scientific journey that could lead to better treatments for people with impaired memories.