Scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered a breakthrough in understanding a previously unknown function in the brain - a mechanism that may explain how the brain can recall nearly all of what happened on a recent day (or make a thorough plan for how to spend an upcoming day) in a fraction of the time it takes to live out the experience.
If your head’s not spinning yet:
Scientists say that the newly discovered mechanism (which compresses information needed for memory retrieval, imagination or planning and encodes it on a brain wave frequency that's separate from the one used for recording real-time experiences) is similar to what happens in a computer when you compress a file!
"The reason we're excited about it is that we think this mechanism can help explain how you can imagine a sequence of events you're about to do in a time-compressed manner," says Laura Colgin, an assistant professor of neuroscience. "You can plan out those events and think about the sequences of actions you'll do. And all of that happens on a faster time scale when you're imagining it than when you actually go and do those things."
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