Researchers have found a telltale mental signature that predicts whether an experience will be remembered. Once deciphered, the signals could be used to help people know when their brains are primed to remember, perhaps using an iPhone app.

“Instead of looking at how the information is being processed, we’re looking at how the brain prepares to process the information,” said study co-author Emrah Duzel, a University College, London, neuroscientist. “It may be that the state we look at prepares the memory system for a relevant event.”

Duzel’s team found the signal in the medial temporal lobe, a region of the brain associated with memory formation. Exactly how medial temporal activation improves recall isn’t understood, and researchers have only a vague idea of how memories are stored. As with most of the brain, memory researchers are like Eastern European hackers during the latter stages of the Cold War, trying to connect the mysterious circuitry of western computers to their functions.

Some researchers have found activity in the medial temporal lobe and other memory-processing centers when events are encoded. Other studies have found activation patterns that precede the formation of certain types of memories, such as verbal or visual.

via Memory Switch Could Enable Brain Hacks | Wired Science from Wired.com.