(1825 - 1919)
Meteorólogo. Precursor en Cuba de las investigaciones en ese campo, dedicó gran parte de su actividad científica a la Zoología, la Geografía y la Etnología. Como geógrafo elaboró en 1848 un Atlas con 28 mapas litografiados para las escuelas primarias que fue el primero de su tipo impreso en Cuba
Biomedical Sciences
1996 | Electrophysiologic evidences of the existence of independent memory modules for faces and words
Main executives entity: National Center for Scientific Research (CNIC)
Main author: Maria Antonieta Bobes León
Summary: There is in literature a hard debate about memory as a unique system, or if there are several systems of memory, each of them responsible of processing different kinds of stimuli: words, objects, faces, music, etc. In our work, there are evidences of the existence of two different neural systems to process faces and words. We use an electrophysiologic component (N400), which had only been described in relation to the linguistic process. We were able to design an experimental situation where it was obtained a component similar to N400, during the processing of faces, which was worldwide the first report of a type of component related to non-linguistic stimuli.It was demonstrated in ulterior studies that this N400 for faces was related to their activation in memory, and neither to perceptive process nor to the activation of verbal codes associated to faces. There were also carried out studies of the topographic distribution of this component on scalp for both kinds of stimuli, which demonstrated that these appear in different regions. We have recently repeted this study registering in 120 different places and adjusting the distribution obtained on images of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. . This study has indicated that there is a neural system to process faces, probably located in the right temporal region, while words’ equivalent process takes place in the frontal region of left hemisphere, which operates with similar mecanisms. It is the first evidence obtained in normal individuals of the existence of two indepedent memory systems for faces and words. On the other hand, the description of a component related to the memory for faces, will allow studying with precision patients with cerebral lesions that affect these functions.
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