Words on the brain: new neurological research into the grammar of memory. From the article:

In his research on the hippocampus of rodents, [George] Dragoi, an associate professor of psychiatry and of neuroscience, has found that early in life there emerge in this part of the brain individual functional clusters of cells (and, soon after, short sequences of cells) that predictably will be activated by new experiences. Within days of birth, he found, these cells, clusters, and short sequences become the foundation for increasingly complex sequences of cell assemblies that allow for the creation of memories.

In a new article published in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Dragoi makes the case that the human brain also develops a cellular template soon after birth which defines who we are and how we perceive the world. He describes it as “the generative grammar” of the brain.

“Neurons organize like letters, then words, then sentences and paragraphs which allow for the internalization of the outside world,” Dragoi said. “The brain has its own built-in sense of grammar.”

The idea, he admits, runs counter to the tenets of empiricism, a centuries-old theory that all knowledge is derived from sensory experience. It also contradicts widely held assumption by life scientists that environmental stimuli will entirely dictate how the brain processes and stores information….

This network of cells, Dragoi says, is activated sequentially. To use the grammar analogy, even in the early days of life the rat’s hippocampus possesses letters and short words, but not the ability to order them into meaningful sentences or paragraphs that can be stored as memories or to predict future changes in the environment….

Later in life, however, these pre-existing cellular assemblies in the hippocampus activate a more sophisticated template, or grammar, that allows for the formation of memories that have pointers to specific places and time, Dragoi said.

Put another way, humans possess the neural competence to process external stimuli soon after birth, but only over time do we develop the ability to perform mental tasks and accurately perceive the world around us. This neural performance is enhanced over time, allowing us to draw on past experiences to infer the likelihood of future events, the hallmark of cognition and intelligence.

For other posts on neuroscience, see here.