Faulty memory sometimes gets the best of us, like when we're scrambling to find a lost pair of keys or a phone. There's good reason to invest in recent research on the humble chickadee, which apparently has the mind of a steel trap. In fact, these birds can remember things so well that they could help us understand how a memory takes form.
Researchers from Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute took a closer look at the brains of black-capped chickadees, an endeavor that has hatched an exciting revelation about the making of memories.
It turns out that neural activity in chickadees’ brains allows them to store memories of locations in the form of distinct ‘barcodes.' Researchers believe this activity may even occur in other animal brains and human brains. Their findings have been detailed in a new paper released in the journal Cell.