Researchers find that memory storage molecule preserves complex memories (12/26/2008)

In a discovery that may one day lead to the ability to erase debilitating painful memories and addictions from the brain, researchers at SUNY Downstate Medical Center have found that a molecule known to preserve memories – PKMzeta – specifically stores complex, high-quality memories that provide detailed information about an animal’s location, fears, and actions, but does not control the ability to process or express this information. This finding suggests that PKMzeta erasure that is designed to target specific debilitating memories could be effective against the offending memory while sparing the computational function of brain…

“If further work confirms this view we can expect to one day see therapies based on PKMzeta memory erasure,” Dr. Fenton suggests. “Negative memory erasing not only could help people forget painful experiences, but might be useful in treating depression, general anxiety, phobias, post-traumatic stress, and addictions,” he adds.

Unlocking the mysteries of memory (12/10/2008)

Researchers led by Prof. Itzhak Fried, a neurosurgeon at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine, are proving scientifically what scientists have always suspected — that the neurons excited during an experience are the same as those excited when we remember that experience. This finding, reported in the prestigious journal Science in October, gives researchers a clearer picture of how memory recall works and has important implications for understanding dementias such as Alzheimer’s, in which fragments of the memory puzzle seem to disintegrate over time.
A Rare Glimpse Inside Your Brain

“This is a rare opportunity to see how neurons, the basic units of cognition, work during the act of recall,” says Prof. Fried from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), where he is also a full professor. “It’s unique because we’re able to look at single cells in the brain when people spontaneously retrieve something from inside their memory without any cue from outside.”

The research was challenging and could only be done on human subjects ¯ other animals lack the ability to verbalize their memories. “Taking a look at individual neurons can only be obtained under special circumstances,” he says. “This is what we’ve managed to achieve.”

Monitoring the subjects’ brain activity as electrodes recorded individual neurons, Prof. Fried and his Israeli colleagues, were effectively able to “see” real human memory recall in action, in real time. This is unprecedented, say his peers, who laud this research as “foundational.”