The brain works like a diligent student during sleep: it repeats what it has learnt, links it to existing knowledge and transforms it into stable memory content. These processes are crucial for learning and could potentially also promote mental health - especially in diseases associated with sleep and memory problems. This is where the ‘MemoryTracker’ project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) with two million euros, comes in, which is being carried out under the direction of Dr Gordon Feld at the Central Institute of Mental Health (ZI) in Mannheim. Using state-of-the-art technologies such as high-field MRI and magnetoencephalography, the team is investigating how the brain processes and changes complex content during sleep.
A key innovation of the project is the use of realistic learning materials: instead of simple lists of words, the test subjects learn networks of emotionally meaningful images. This allows memory processing to be recorded more accurately, while mathematical models and AI map the content as ‘fingerprints’. In addition to studies on healthy participants, research is also being conducted into how these processes are disrupted in depressed people in order to develop new treatment approaches. The aim is to specifically influence emotional memory processes in order to promote mental health in the long term.
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