Researchers in the US have developed an implant to help a disabled brain encode memories, giving new hope to Alzheimer’s sufferers and wounded soldiers who cannot remember the recent past.

美国研究人员开发了一种植入体，以帮助受损的大脑对记忆进行编码，这将给阿尔茨海默病(Alzheimer's disease)患者以及无法记住近期事情的受伤士兵带来新的希望。

The prosthetic, developed at the University of Southern California and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre in a decade-long collaboration, includes a small array of electrodes implanted into the brain.

这种假体是由南加州大学(University of Southern California)和美国维克森林浸信会医学中心(Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre)历时10年之久合作开发出来的，它包含若干植入大脑的电极。

The key to the research is a computer algorithm that mimics the electrical signalling used by the brain to translate short-term into permanent memories.

这项研究的关键是一种计算机算法，它会模拟大脑用来将短期记忆转变为长期记忆的电子信号。

This makes it possible to bypass a damaged or diseased region, even though there is no way of “reading” a memory — decoding its content or meaning from its electrical signal.

这让绕过受损或患病大脑区域成为可能，尽管目前还没有办法“阅读”记忆——即破译出这些电子信号代表什么内容或含义。

“It’s like being able to translate from Spanish to French without being able to understand either language,” said Ted Berger of USC, the project leader.

该项目负责人、南加州大学的泰德伯杰(Ted Berger)表示：“这就好比是能在既不懂西班牙语也不懂法语的情况下将西班牙语译成法语。”

The prosthesis has performed well in tests on rats and monkeys. Now it is being evaluated in human brains, the team told the international conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society in Milan.

这种假体在老鼠和猴子身上测试时取得了不错的效果。研究团队在IEEE生物医学工程学会(IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society)米兰国际会议上表示，现在正在人脑中进行评测。

The project is funded by Darpa, the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is interested in new ways to help soldiers recover from memory loss.

该项目的资金来自美国国防高级研究计划局(US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency)，该局感兴趣的是帮助士兵从失忆中康复的新方法。

But the researchers say findings could eventually help to treat neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s, by enabling signals to bypass damaged circuitry in the hippocampus, the brain’s memory centre.

但这些研究人员表示，通过让信号绕过海马体（Hippocampus，大脑记忆中枢）的受损回路，上述研究发现最终可能有助于治疗神经退行性疾病，包括阿尔茨海默病。