Study: Monkey memory parallels humans'

ATLANTA, April 28 (UPI) -- A finding that monkeys can reproduce simple shapes from memory help us understand the evolution of memory and other cognitive abilities, U.S. researchers say.

Scientists at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University said identifying this recall ability in monkeys could be applied to better diagnosing and treating memory impairments in humans.

"We believe we have found a new method for testing animals that opens a whole new window into the world of non-human memory research," researcher Ben Basile said. "For the first time, monkeys can actually show us what they recollect, and their test results are directly comparable to human tests."

The researchers developed a computer touchscreen method to test the recall power of rhesus monkeys, an Emory release said Thursday.

"Our observations of recall in Old World monkeys suggest it may have been adaptive in primates long before humans evolved, and that it does not depend on language or anything else that is uniquely human," Basile said.

The performance of the monkeys on the computer touchscreen paralleled that of humans in a standard human recall test, in which subjects draw a complicated shape from memory.

"Humans certainly recall more complex and sophisticated things over longer time periods," Basile said. "But we've shown that for simple shapes, monkeys have a pattern of performance for recognition and recall that mirrors that of humans.

"With this type of information, we are moving closer to better diagnosing and developing treatments for memory impairments in humans," he said.