How Exercise Can Fuel Mental 'Time Travel' And Boost Creativity

This study identified this phenomenon by first recording the activity of hippocampal cells as rats became familiar with one part (Part A) of a spatial maze where lots of place cells and replay events were active. During the exploration of Part A, there was also a part of the maze that was blocked off, and the rats never experienced the other part (Part B). When the rats finally saw Part B of the maze, the experimenters discovered that some place-cell activity seen in the rest period, before Part B was ever revealed, actually predicted the pattern of activity seen when the rat was able to explore Part B of the maze. This phenomenon is called hippocampal preplay and suggests the hippocampus is not only replaying spatial events it had experienced before (memory), but also seems to be playing out possible scenarios that could occur some time in the future (imagination). Those hippocampal preplay events are based on knowledge of the current environment and form a framework for future neural signals representing those future events. Imagining exercise Now, we cannot know if those rats are sitting there imagining the beautiful tropical beach that might be on the other side of the blocked arm on the maze, but the pattern of neural activity suggests that some of these future possibilities are seen in the pattern of normal hippocampal activity. This phenomenon is similar to the data showing the important role of the human hippocampus in future thinking or imagination. How ...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news