UCLA and United Kingdom researchers have revealed that neurons in a specific brain region hold a great importance in forming memories about every day events. The researchers have said that the finding has opened the doors for having a deeper understanding of memory loss and developing new methods to fight Alzheimer's and other neurological diseases.

The study involved examination of neurons in the medial temporal lobe associated with episodic memory, which allows the brain to experience events and situations like running into an old school friend at the opera.

Findings of the study have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Neuron. The study was conducted on 14 patients with severe epilepsy who were hospitalized at UCLA. The researchers implanted electrodes in their brains to identify the seizure focus for possible surgical intervention.

"This study goes into the heart of the neural code underlying one of the most fundamental aspects of human cognition and memory, namely the formation of associations. The astonishing finding was that this basic code is so explicit at the level of individual neurons in the human brain", said study senior author Dr. Itzhak Fried, professor of neurosurgery and psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.

Fried added that it's great technical achievement to record such activity of even one lonely cell in a multitude of billions of neurons in the brain of a patient on a hospital ward. There are only few places in the world wherein such an achievement is possible.

The findings could help improve brain function in people with Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions.