![]() ![]() In the brain, memory is primarily managed by the hippocampus, a region of the brain responsible for encoding and storing memories. Now, if clusters of berries are scattered throughout the forest, remembering their exact location will allow us to pick more in a short time." If there are only a few, the effort required to pick them is too great in relation to the possible gain - a few berries will not feed us. Imagine picking berries in the forest: if they are everywhere, you do not have to remember where to find them. "If the task is too easy, motivation decreases as quickly as if it is too difficult, and that affects our ability to encode information. "Our brain needs rewards to motivate us, but also challenges," explains Sophie Schwartz. The most effective? Somewhere between the highest and lowest accumulated rewards. "Contrary to what one might have thought, the best results were not associated with the highest accumulation of rewards, the point where subjects should have been the most motivated," says Kristoffer Aberg, a researcher now at the Weizmann Institute of Science and the first author of this work. Critically, the average number of points that could be gained varied over the course of the experiment. Twenty minutes later, the subjects were asked to retrieve these associations to earn additional points. About 30 healthy subjects were asked to remember associations between objects and people each correct answer was associated with points gained, and each incorrect answer with points lost (the points were then converted into money). To answer these questions, the scientists have developed an experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging, an imaging technique that allows real-time observation of the brain in action. "However, our experiment aimed to take a further step in understanding this mechanism by looking at two important aspects: does the effect last over time and what role does the accumulation of reward play?"Ī measured challenge to motivate the brain But what are the brain mechanisms at work, and how can we exploit them to optimize our memory capacity? "The positive influence of a reward on memory is a well-known phenomenon," says Sophie Schwartz, full professor in the Department of Basic Neurosciences at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine, who led this work. Empirically, it seems quite logical that obtaining a reward can improve the memories associated with it. ![]()
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