Ever struggled to remember where you left your keys?

For some of us it can be an almost daily challenge. As humans we are in an ever changing environment, from things as small as remembering where we put our keys down, to bigger things like where we parked our car. This can put a strain on our brain, and the Stalk institute for biological sciences attempted to explain how our brain can keep track of where everything is.

This resulted in research that showed a subregion of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus keeps the different memories that we have of similar environments and events separate. This region allows for individual recordings of our changing environments, which is what allows us to remember where we may have left our various possessions. In some cases however, this system can be at fault, leaving us fumbling around and looking under sofa cushions.

This type of research can give us a much stronger understanding of how the brain stores and recollects different memories. This could also be important when considering neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimers, which strip us of our ability to recollect certain memories.