UK – Is there any similarity between memory and antimatter? What is the link between two seemingly opposing concepts?  Memory footprint could be defined as an event or experience left in our brain.  And antimatter is the physical concept that defines a form of matter consisting of particles as the flow of matter, but oppositely charged.  That is, that antimatter would be like a mirror image of matter.

But now a new study conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford and University College London (UCL), suggests the existence of a new concept that has been dubbed anti-memories.  What they have discovered is that when you create new connections between neurons that give rise to the formation of a memory, while a pattern of neuronal electrical activity exactly opposite to the above is generated.

In colloquial language it means that, although the formation of a new memory generates a powerful electrical excitation of neurons, the total level of electrical activity in the brain remains in a curious balance.

Scientists believe, therefore, that the formation of anti-memories is a second brain linked to learning process, whose role is to rebalance the neuronal excitation and keep the entire system under control.

The research was published in the open access journal Neuron.