by Raphaelle Clay

Created on: October 21, 2008

Brain, report, hemisphere, control, knowledge, cerebral cortex, to forget, neurons, to select, to remember, to input, network, to filter, to archive, to encode There are as many words as possibilities when it comes to consider this magnificent organ that is the brain.

These words, indeed, were, before hand, seen, heard, analyzed, read, understood, repeated, written and recorded by my brain before I could use them to build my text. Yes, but how did the brain build this memory and update it on an everyday basis ?

Before going any further, let's consider the brain as a tower of control. As such, the brain must be informed of our needs and make available the resources we need in our environment.

To perform this task, the brain has the most amazing team at its service : Our brain contains 100 billion neurons. These nerve cells are organized in multiple networks and each performs a specific task according to its location in the cerebral cortex.

At present, scientists place the memory in several regions of the brain, according to their specific functions ; according to them, the durable memorization depends on the hippocampus and on its neighboring cerebral cortex. That is why damages in this region, (crbro-vascular, traumatism or inflammation), can lead to confusions of memory (such as amnesia). The limbic system of the brain manage the selection of the stored information.

Yet how does it work ? To remember the information and store them correctly, neurons are the master keys. They are the workers. They generate electric signals and communicate with each other at the level of small structures called synapses. When it comes to perform an efficient storage of new information, they are able to amplify signals and to favor the communication with cells.

Besides, on every nerve cell, synaptic contacts can be created or erased at any time according to the activity or the functions which the cell performs within the network. And this activity is done thanks to the nerves, which function like roads or motorways of information. As a matter of fact, the nerves, the brain and the spinal cord form the nervous system. But the brain does not only record information, it also command the whole system. That's is why we make a distinction between the centres of command and the ways of information building. Thus, the nervous system is divided into :

- The peripheral nervous system which provides a vast network of nerves, among which some collect the information and others send the orders.

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