Rules of memory beautifully rewritten (response text)

Brain is one of the most important organs in our body. We can think, memorize, and
learn because of brain. Several functions of the brain that have been studied lately are how
memories are formed and how short-term memory and long-term memory work. There are two
past events that influence the discovery of those functions.

The case of Henry Molaison in the 1950s is one of the clues. His hippocampus was
damaged during epilepsy surgery and he was no longer able to make new memories, but his ones
from before the operation were still there. So the prevailing idea was that memories are formed
in the hippocampus and then moved to the cortex where they are banked. But this idea was
objected by an experiment by the team at the Riken-MIT Center for Neutral Circuit Genetics.

The team did experiments to show the previous idea is not the case. The experiments had
to be performed on mice, but are thought to apply to human brains too. They involved watching
specific memories form as a cluster of connected brain cells in reaction to a shock. Then they
used light beamed into the brain to control of the activity of individual neurons they could
literally switch memories on or off. The results showed that memories were formed
simultaneously in the hippocampus and the cortex. The researchers also showed that memories
are formed as the short-term first and never matured to the long-term if the connection between
the hippocampus and the cortex was blocked. So there is still a link between the two parts of the
brain, with the balance of power shifting from the hippocampus to the cortex over time.

So, the conclusions are memories are formed simultaneously at the hippocampus and the
cortex, and then the new memories defined as short-time memories will become the long-term
memory if there is balance of power shifting from the hippocampus to the cortex over time. The
hippocampus and the cortex are working simultaneously to create memories in our life.