‘Where are my keys?’ and other memory-based choices probed in the brain

Most of us know that feeling of trying to retrieve a memory that does not come right away. While memory retrieval has been the subject of countless animal studies and other neuroimaging work in humans, exactly how the process works–and how we make decisions based on memories–has remained unclear.

In a new study published in the journal Science, a collaborative team of neuroscientists has identified different sets of individual neurons responsible for memory-based decision-making, a hallmark of the human brain’s flexibility.

“An essential aspect of cognitive flexibility is our ability to selectively search for information in memory when we need it,” says senior author Ueli Rutishauser, visiting associate in biology and bioengineering at Caltech and Board of Governors Professor in Neurosciences at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. “This is the first time neurons have been described in the human brain that signal memory-based decisions. In addition, our study shows how memories are transferred to the frontal lobe selectively and only when needed.”

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