Decoding How Brains Respond to Positive and Negative Memories
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The incredible advances in technology over the past two decades have given scientists the power to map the human brain. Researchers now know where in the brain different emotions and reactions are processed and many of the different connections between different brain regions.
NYSCF – Robertson Neuroscience Investigator Kay Tye, MIT, parses brain signals and makes sense of how different neurons interact. In her most recent research published in Neuron, Dr. Tye studies how memories with positive and negative connotations are routed through different neuronal pathways. Her results show that there are special populations of neurons that tend to excite more for positive-associations and other neurons that tend to excite more for negative-associations. This work begins to provide necessary information to explain how humans might assign emotions to events — a critical component of some mental illnesses wherein emotions and events mismatch.