New research showing how the brain remembers the order of events may offer a roadmap for addressing memory-related conditions like Alzheimer’s disease. Previous research has shown the brain’s medial temporal lobe (MTL) has a significant role in declarative memory—that is, memory of facts and events or episodes—and damage to it causes impairment in memory for the timing of events within an episode. But little is still known about how individual structures within the MTL remember information about “what happened when” within a particular episode, for example the order of the toasts at a wedding reception or what preceded a game-winning hit in a baseball game.
