Skip to main content
Navigate back to homepage
Open search bar.
Open main navigation menu

Main navigation

  • Study
    UCL Portico statue
    Study at UCL

    Being a student at UCL is about so much more than just acquiring knowledge. Studying here gives you the opportunity to realise your potential as an individual, and the skills and tools to thrive.

    • Undergraduate courses
    • Graduate courses
    • Short courses
    • Study abroad
    • Centre for Languages & International Education
  • Research
    Tree-of-Life-MehmetDavrandi-UCL-EastmanDentalInstitute-042_2017-18-800x500-withborder (1)
    Research at UCL

    Find out more about what makes UCL research world-leading, how to access UCL expertise, and teams in the Office of the Vice-Provost (Research, Innovation and Global Engagement).

    • Engage with us
    • Explore our Research
    • Initiatives and networks
    • Research news
  • Engage
    UCL Print room
    Engage with UCL

    Discover the many ways you can connect with UCL, and how we work with industry, government and not-for-profit organisations to tackle tough challenges.

    • Alumni
    • Business partnerships and collaboration
    • Global engagement
    • News and Media relations
    • Public Policy
    • Schools and priority groups
    • Visit us
  • About
    UCL welcome quad
    About UCL

    Founded in 1826 in the heart of London, UCL is London's leading multidisciplinary university, with more than 16,000 staff and 50,000 students from 150 different countries.

    • Who we are
    • Faculties
    • Governance
    • President and Provost
    • Strategy
  • Active parent page: Brain Sciences
    • Study
    • Research
    • About the Faculty
    • Institutes and Divisions
    • Active parent page: News and Events
    • Contact

Traces of the past: computer algorithm ‘reads’ memories

Breadcrumb trail

  • Brain Sciences
  • News and Events

Faculty menu

  • Current page: Faculty news
  • Events

Computer programs can predict which of three short films a person is thinking about, just by looking at their brain activity.


The research, conducted by scientists at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL, provides further insight into how our memories are recorded, and is published today in the journal Current Biology.

Professor Eleanor Maguire led this Wellcome Trust-funded study, an extension of work published last year which showed how spatial memories – in that case, where a volunteer was standing in a virtual reality room – are recorded in regular patterns of activity in the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for learning and memory.

[image reference is broken]


“In our previous experiment, we were looking at basic memories, at someone’s location in an environment,” said Professor Maguire. “What is more interesting is to look at ‘episodic’ memories – the complex, everyday memories that include much more information on where we are, what we are doing and how we feel.”

Although a whole network of brain areas support memory, the researchers focused their study on the medial temporal lobe, an area deep within the brain believed to be most heavily involved in episodic memory. It includes the hippocampus – an area which Professor Maguire and colleagues have studied extensively in the past.

“Now that we are developing a clearer picture of how our memories are stored, we hope to examine how they are affected by time, the ageing process and by brain injury,” said Professor Maguire.

Read more  >> UCL News | BBC News Online | Guardian | 

Reference >> Current Biology, 11 March 2010  |  10.1016/j.cub.2010.01.053
Decoding Individual Episodic Memory Traces in the Human Hippocampus
Martin J. Chadwick, Demis Hassabis, Nikolaus Weiskopf, Eleanor A. Maguire

UCL footer

Visit

  • Bloomsbury Theatre and Studio
  • Library, Museums and Collections
  • UCL Maps
  • UCL Shop
  • Contact UCL

Students

  • Accommodation
  • Current Students
  • Moodle
  • Students' Union

Staff

  • Inside UCL
  • Staff Intranet
  • Work at UCL
  • Human Resources

UCL social media menu

  • Link to Soundcloud
  • Link to Flickr
  • Link to TikTok
  • Link to Youtube
  • Link to Instagram
  • Link to Facebook
  • Link to Twitter

University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7679 2000

© 2025 UCL

Essential

  • Disclaimer
  • Freedom of Information
  • Accessibility
  • Cookies
  • Privacy
  • Slavery statement
  • Log in