This type of brain scan helps to show how healthy the hippocampus is.

You may remember Frank Felberbaum from a previous FRONTIERS segment, Memory Marathon. Frank taught Alan, and a group of New Jersey High School students, ways to improve their memory recall. Now Alan joins Frank at Riesa Sperling's lab at Massachusetts General Hospital. Using a scanner, Sperling peers into Frank's and Alan's brains to see their hippocampi in action as they store and try to recall pairs of names and faces.

When it comes to the hippocampus, it's clear that size matters. Plump hippocampi are "young" hippocampi and therefore better at organizing information needed for memory recall. Both Frank and Alan are happy to learn that their hippocampi are quite ample.

Riesa Sperling and Alan discuss the role of the hippocampus in making memories.

Frank is shown 455 face-name pairs for only two seconds apiece. On the scans, Frank's hippocampus lights up when he views pairs he will later recall but remains dark for those he will later forget.

Alan's up next. Though his task is significantly easier, the results of his trial are quite revealing. Alan is given a full eight seconds to memorize the face-name pairs. Two of the pairs (Steve and Karen) reappear many times throughout the scanning process. As with Frank, Alan's hippocampus lights up when he successfully stores a memory and remains dark when the memory is not locked in. But here's where things get interesting: Alan's hippocampus also remains dark after repeated exposure to Steve and Karen's faces. Sperling believes that once Alan learned these pairings, his hippocampus no longer needed to pay attention because the faces were already successfully stored.

For more on this topic, see the web feature:
The Name Game