Rats take fast route to remembering
By Bruce Bower
People call on a rich background of relevant experiences to organize and remember new material. Rats do the same, and with surprising speed, say Dorothy Tse of the University of Edinburgh and her coworkers.
Prior studies, which have focused on task learning unrelated to preexisting knowledge, indicate that a brain region called the hippocampus incorporates new facts and events into memory. The hippocampus gradually yields to another structure, the neocortex, as new memories become stronger. This process typically takes at least 1 month in rodents and a few years in people.