Of Rats and Men: Experimenting with Memory.

Last Friday, Professor Gewirtz lectured on the importance of the hippocampus--the area in which the brain has the ability to understand where it is and to be able to orient its surroundings--for Spatial Memory. Gewirtz provides the example of the Morris Water Maze test, and how it proves the role the hippocampus plays in navigation. The conclusion of the test is that the lab animal is able to find the submerged pool faster than the first trial because it stores the landmarks (i.e. a table, desk, or picture that is placed in the experiment room) in the hippocampus--the hippocampus lets off nerve impulses that signals when the animal is in a certain area, thus allowing the animal to understand where it is. Further tests involving animals with lesions to the hippocampus or other parts of the brain not having anything to do with the hippocampus and even animals with enhanced hippocampuses prove that it is the hippocampus which plays such an important role in spatial memory.
I find this most important because of how this study correlates with Long-term Potentiation--new abilities in enhancing the hippocampus lead to new inquiries of how LTP can be further increased in humans. The problem of losing one's memory as one grows older is a natural process which we all fear, but it is unnecessary if science can use the knowledge of the hippocampus to procure a method of slowing or even eliminating the age old dilemma. This is an area of special interest to me as I worked with individuals in the Alzheimer's unit of a nursing home--I have seen what losing one's memory does, and the pain and humiliation it brings to the individual and relatives alike. While I understand scientists must first work with rats before humans, it makes me wonder about the progress being made in this field--does one really need to make a rat with a super hippocampus? Time is of the essence here with Alzheimer's and dementia on the rise--why not try it with humans? After all, the human brain is significantly more complex than the rats', maybe this will be beneficial in studies. Regardless of the issue I raised, I do believe that the hippocampus discovery is only the first step in understanding the complexities of memory.
--Ashli Carlson