The brain encodes time and space through common neural sequences

If you develop Alzheimer's disease, you not only lose your sense of time, but you also lose your sense of place. Could time and place be two sides of the same coin?

Around 55 million people globally are currently living with dementia, such as Alzheimer's disease, a number that is expected to triple by 2050. At the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences at the University of Oslo, researchers are working to get closer to understanding what happens in the brain, so that we can prevent or slow the development of such diseases.

All memories are made up of different components. You don't just remember what you had for dinner yesterday, but also the time and place. We often think of time and space as separate categories, a distinction created by philosophers and physicists that is incredibly practical for organizing our lives. But our brain cells don't see it that way."

These cells don't distinguish between a step forward in space or a second passing in time. Instead, they simply record a continuously changing stream of information from our senses, tracking events as they unfold. To the brain's internal network, time and place are effectively two sides of the same coin, he explains.