Washington, Aug 27 - Rats use an instant replay of their actions to help them decide what to do next, says a new study shedding new light on how animals and humans learn and remember which in turn can lead to new methods of treatment.

'By understanding how thoughts and memories are structured, we can gain insight into how they might be disrupted in diseases and disorders of memory and thought such as Alzheimer's and schizophrenia,' said study author Matthew A. Wilson.

Wilson, neuroscience professor at the MIT Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, said 'this understanding may lead to new methods of diagnosis and treatment'.

His lab explores how rats form and recall memory by recording, with unprecedented accuracy, the activity of single neurons in the hippocampus while the animal is performing tasks, pausing between actions and sleeping.