Chickadees use unique neural patterns resembling barcodes to remember food cache locations, activating specific hippocampal activity.
In a recent study, researchers analyzed these black-capped, white-cheeked curious birds, revealing insights into how episodic memories are encoded in the brain.When a bird caches food it needs to remember where that is, for later. In this study, chickadees became guests in an arena with 128 small storage sites specially created for them by scientists. Using small probes connected to five chickadees, the research team followed neural recordings in their brain.
Each barcode includes 7% of the cells in the hippocampus. Why is this important? When a bird makes a cache, 7% of neurons respond. This led the team to conclude that every time a bird returns to one of many food caches, a different combination of neurons lights up.
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