Scientists managed to transport the man back in time by stimulating parts of his brain. A 22-year-old patient reported seeing scenes of visiting a pizzeria with his family, as well as a train station in his hometown, when in fact he was sitting in a medical office.
The researchers hope the discovery could help them better understand the areas of the brain used to gain information about places.
The hallucinations appeared after Pierre Mejevan of the Feinstein Institute in New York implanted electrodes in a young man's brain. With their help, the scientist hoped to establish the cause of the epilepsy from which the subject suffered. Tiny holes were drilled into the patient's skull to fit them. The 5-centimeter electrodes were connected to specific points in the brain.
According to a report by research team member Helen Thomson, published in New Scientist, Dr. Mejevan first examined the volunteer's brain with functional MRI while he was looking at images of various objects and scenes, and then recorded activity with implanted electrodes when the patient observed the same set of images.
Scientists found that when the patient looked at photographs of the sites, the cortex around the hippocampus was activated.
“There are small areas in brain tissue that seem to respond to familiar homes and places more than any other object,” said research team member Asheh Mehta.
The implanted electrodes were used to stimulate the brain in the area that caused a series of visual hallucinations. The young man initially said that he saw a familiar railway station and later part of his house, but at the same time he did not feel the smell and sounds that he associated with these places.
Upon repeated stimulation of the same areas of the brain, the patient saw the same hallucinations. And when the researchers stimulated a slightly different area located in the inferior temporal gyrus with electrodes, the volunteer said that the images suddenly began to distort.
Promotional video:
“Perhaps a certain group of neurons encodes the memory of a person wearing an apron, another group encodes a stove or roadway, and when we stimulate them at the same time, this leads to the appearance of memories of the place where all these objects were seen,” said Dr. Mehta.
Dr. Mehta said experimenting over time could help people who suffer from diseases such as autism or Alzheimer's.
The study continues the work of scientists at Stanford University, who discovered two years ago that electrodes placed in a specific area of the brain could affect a person's ability to process faces, Mail Online notes.
