US scientists who have been studying the brain cells in the mice have come to a conclusion that even a single cell in the front part of the brain can store a lot of traces of memories on its own for as long as minutes to even longer. The scientists have compared such a cell to a RAM, which is short term memory storage in all the computers.

The research is produced as a paper in the online issue of the Nature Neuroscience and is authored by Dr. Don Cooper. This is the first ever study that suggests that a single signal enables the cell in the brain to hold the information temporarily. Such information can help a lot in understanding and treating addiction, memory loss and the attention disorders due to the things such as trauma and stress. Scientists are always aware that permanent memories get stored at the time when glutamate turns on the ion channels of the brain cells in order to reorganise and reinforce the way they hook up to each other. But this takes up a lot of time, even hours in order to fire up and turn off and the reaction here is too slow to act as a temporary buffer for storing information that comes in at a much faster speed.

Such information enhances our knowledge about they way in which the brain stores up information that can change rapidly.