Brain Scientists Finally Discover the Glue That Makes Memories Stick For a Lifetime (scientificamerican.com) 71
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American, written by science journalist Simon Makin: The persistence of memory is crucial to our sense of identity, and without it, there would be no learning, for us or any other animal. It's little wonder, then, that some researchers have called how the brain stores memories the most fundamental question in neuroscience. A milestone in the effort to answer this question came in the early 1970s, with the discovery of a phenomenon called long-term potentiation, or LTP. Scientists found that electrically stimulating a synapse that connects two neurons causes a long-lasting increase in how well that connection transmits signals. Scientists say simply that the "synaptic strength" has increased. This is widely believed to be the process underlying memory. Networks of neural connections of varying strengths are thought to be what memories are made of.
In the search for molecules that enable LTP, two main contenders emerged. One, called PKMzeta (protein kinase Mzeta), made a big splash when a 2006 study showed that blocking it erased memories for places in rats. If obstructing a molecule erases memories, researchers reasoned, that event must be essential to the process the brain uses to maintain memories. A flurry of research into the so-called memory molecule followed, and numerous experiments appeared to show that it was necessary and sufficient for maintaining numerous types of memory. The theory had a couple of holes, though. First, PKMzeta is short-lived. "Those proteins only last in synapses for a couple of hours, and in neurons, probably a couple of days," says Todd Sacktor, a neurologist at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, who was co-senior author of the 2006 study. "Yet our memories can last 90 years, so how do you explain this difference?" Second, PKMzeta is created in cells as needed, but then it has to find the right synapses. Each neuron has around 10,000 synapses, only a few percent of which are strengthened, says neuroscientist Andre Fenton, the other co-senior author of the 2006 study, who is now at New York University. The strengthening of some synapses and not others is how this mechanism stores information, but how PKMzeta molecules accomplish this was unknown.
A new study published in Science Advances by Sacktor, Fenton and their colleagues plugs these holes. The research suggests that PKMzeta works alongside another molecule, called KIBRA (kidney and brain expressed adaptor protein), which attaches to synapses activated during learning, effectively "tagging" them. KIBRA couples with PKMzeta, which then keeps the tagged synapses strengthened. Experiments show that blocking the interaction between these two molecules abolishes LTP in neurons and disrupts spatial memories in mice. Both molecules are short-lived, but their interaction persists. "It's not PKMzeta that's required for maintaining a memory, it's the continual interaction between PKMzeta and this targeting molecule, called KIBRA," Sacktor says. "If you block KIBRA from PKMzeta, you'll erase a memory that's a month old." The specific molecules will have been replaced many times during that month, he adds. But, once established, the interaction maintains memories over the long term as individual molecules are continually replenished. [...] "What seems clear is that there is no single 'memory molecule,'" concludes Scientific American. "Regardless of any competing candidate, PKMzeta needs a second molecule to maintain long-term memories, and there is another that can substitute in a pinch."
"There are also some types of memory, such as the association of a location with fear, that do not depend on PKMzeta," the report adds. "Nobody knows what molecules are involved in those cases, and PKMzeta is clearly not the whole story."
In the search for molecules that enable LTP, two main contenders emerged. One, called PKMzeta (protein kinase Mzeta), made a big splash when a 2006 study showed that blocking it erased memories for places in rats. If obstructing a molecule erases memories, researchers reasoned, that event must be essential to the process the brain uses to maintain memories. A flurry of research into the so-called memory molecule followed, and numerous experiments appeared to show that it was necessary and sufficient for maintaining numerous types of memory. The theory had a couple of holes, though. First, PKMzeta is short-lived. "Those proteins only last in synapses for a couple of hours, and in neurons, probably a couple of days," says Todd Sacktor, a neurologist at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, who was co-senior author of the 2006 study. "Yet our memories can last 90 years, so how do you explain this difference?" Second, PKMzeta is created in cells as needed, but then it has to find the right synapses. Each neuron has around 10,000 synapses, only a few percent of which are strengthened, says neuroscientist Andre Fenton, the other co-senior author of the 2006 study, who is now at New York University. The strengthening of some synapses and not others is how this mechanism stores information, but how PKMzeta molecules accomplish this was unknown.
A new study published in Science Advances by Sacktor, Fenton and their colleagues plugs these holes. The research suggests that PKMzeta works alongside another molecule, called KIBRA (kidney and brain expressed adaptor protein), which attaches to synapses activated during learning, effectively "tagging" them. KIBRA couples with PKMzeta, which then keeps the tagged synapses strengthened. Experiments show that blocking the interaction between these two molecules abolishes LTP in neurons and disrupts spatial memories in mice. Both molecules are short-lived, but their interaction persists. "It's not PKMzeta that's required for maintaining a memory, it's the continual interaction between PKMzeta and this targeting molecule, called KIBRA," Sacktor says. "If you block KIBRA from PKMzeta, you'll erase a memory that's a month old." The specific molecules will have been replaced many times during that month, he adds. But, once established, the interaction maintains memories over the long term as individual molecules are continually replenished. [...] "What seems clear is that there is no single 'memory molecule,'" concludes Scientific American. "Regardless of any competing candidate, PKMzeta needs a second molecule to maintain long-term memories, and there is another that can substitute in a pinch."
"There are also some types of memory, such as the association of a location with fear, that do not depend on PKMzeta," the report adds. "Nobody knows what molecules are involved in those cases, and PKMzeta is clearly not the whole story."
Terrifying discovery (Score:4, Interesting)
We, as a race, always manage to turn our scientific discoveries to the worst possible applications.
Discovering how long term memory works, and how to erase it, is just asking for the worst possible scenarios.
Re: Terrifying discovery (Score:3)
Emotional memory (Score:5, Interesting)
We, as a race, always manage to turn our scientific discoveries to the worst possible applications.
Discovering how long term memory works, and how to erase it, is just asking for the worst possible scenarios.
Emotions are effectively the volume control on memories. Most people can remember situations when they were in danger, all the funny parts of a movie, all the exciting parts of a movie, the first time they had sex, and so on.
Flashbacks and panic attacks are essentially the brain replaying old emotions when the characteristics of a situation resemble the traumatic incident. A woman walks into the kitchen at work, the fluorescent light is flickering, the echoes from the vinyl flooring, there's the smell of coffee, and a co-worker walks in with a beard and... wham, panic attack from when she got assaulted years ago.
If we could turn down the volume on selected memories, there's a lot of application for healing people with certain disabling pathologies related to traumatic experiences. Just off the top, PTSD is a problem with returning soldiers. I bet a lot of them would welcome the ability to turn down the volume on some of their emotional incidents a little.
And just to be provocative...
Was listening to Sam Harris talk (with Jordan Peterson) about evil and he floated the idea of grabbing Stalin and giving him a drug that made him more susceptible to empathy. His point was that the Buddhist view of evil is one of education or sickness, and evil shouldn't be punished it should be cured.
My mind immediately went to the situation where you have a person (Stalin, Saddam Hussein, or others), putting them on trial in the world court, and sentencing them to some sort of chemical memory erasure, where their childhood traumas would be completely erased making the person more socially acceptable. Essentially, making them "sane".
Scary stuff. Sam Harris didn't seem to worry too much about the philosophical ramifications of what he was saying, and JP didn't pick up on them either.
(Hypothetical: suppose Stalin refuses, and states that he likes being who he is and if his personality is changed then he's no longer Stalin. Is changing someone's psychology essentially killing that person? If the world court judges a person guilty but the person maintains his innocense, can you force him into treatment? We do that with current psych treatments, why not this one?)
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Seriously? Have you looked at the US? The same people who jammed to the 'The Wall' not only docilely supported state defined education and youth camp programming at a national scope but try to tell you wanting to shut down the practice would be 'fascism'
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Just for those wondering, "The Wall" is a very good album by Pink Floyd, that dealt with the over-powering government and mentality that reigned supreme back in the 50s 60s and 70s in England. The album created a new mentality for the youth of that day that eventually paved the way for almost everything that was nice back then.
For those that still give a shit about wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Has that really happened? Do people really not know what 'The Wall' is?
Re: Emotional memory (Score:2)
Sometimes its more genetic (Score:2)
we need to find the molecule that makes the Russians so docile and subservient to authority.
Its genetic. It's a result of selective breeding. The more docile and subservient were more likely to survive Czars and Communist leadership.
It's much like how dogs were selectively bred from wolves. The more docile and subservient wolf pups were more likely to be kept.
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That's not genetics, that's just the result of social pressures and stigmas. Remember, the entire reasoning behind socialism is to prepare the people for communism. Once you can get people to conform to socialism, they will themselves begin to crave communism.
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That's not genetics, that's just the result of social pressures and stigmas
Nope. We are talking about pressure that affects survival, or as Darwin might say "selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce."(1) The inherited variation being more docile and subservient. Its nature, genetics, not nurture, social pressure as in bulling and stigmas. It was pressure as in dead and never made it to the point of having children. The Soviets even showed this with wild foxes. They selected the more tolerant of humans and br
Re: Sometimes its more genetic (Score:2)
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So what, you don't have to demonstrate it affects survival, you have to show it has affected genetics.
Did so with the foxes example. Selective breeding changes the genetics of a population.
Incidentally, Russians are not subservient to authority, rather they believe that the authority is on their side.
You realize you just defined a rationalization for subservience?
Re: Sometimes its more genetic (Score:2)
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The fox experiment only allowed a small percentage in each generation. In Russia the vast majority of humans breed. Not equivalent.
And the government in Russia, well Soviet at the time, killed massive numbers of humans who resisted farm collectivization. In short, those who did what they were told had a better chance to survive and breed.
In any case, the fox case demonstrates a Darwinian behavior change. Humans are susceptible to the same. It merely may be a slower process than in the lab. Assuming the government is not murdering millions, million millions by famine, etc.
Re: Sometimes its more genetic (Score:2)
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What percentage of Russians were killed by the Soviets?
You are quibbling over whether Russians were evolved as fast as the foxes. They were not. Yet the fact remains they were subject to a Darwinian process that exerted a pressure that favored those with genetics that were more subservient to authority.
That Putin made himself president for life, that many Russians think authority is protecting them, is aided by this Darwinian process.
Re: Sometimes its more genetic (Score:2)
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It's not even clear that the foxes had any genetic changes over time. The foxes are all living together, so there is some socialization.
You need to read up, its not that a fox grew comfortable around people after years. Its that at birth young foxes were increasing comfortable around people, more in each generation. As at each generation only the most comfortable around people were bred. In a small number of generations they virtually bred out the fear of people, the foxes became very doglike. There were even physical manifestations, a curved tail. Which seems to be somehow associated with tolerance for people. Its genetic.
no clear gene has been found that causes tameness.
Its genetically i
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Putin and Netanyahu are perhaps more relevant examples from today. Nobody ever claimed to share values with Stalin or Saddam.
Yet we are supposed to have 'shared values' with these guys?
"Cry you whore, cry as long as you can until we get to you..."A Putin was indicted by the ICJ for relocating 20k children, while Israel has *killed* that many. If Putin is Stalin 2.0, Israel is Russia 2.0.
The leftist commentariat, on the other hand, seems to have already deployed this tech to erase our memory of October 7.
Re: Emotional memory (Score:2)
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'Hypothetical question, what if Stalin didn't lack empathy?'
He died in his bed, how worse could it get?
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I very much want to die in my bed. WTF is your point?
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Ah, but there's a theory that many terrorists actually do have a lot of empathy, except that it is reserved to a small subset of people. Ie, the empathise with the the people in their region or country, but do not empathise with others. So Country A drops bombs on Country B. Some people in Countr B with intense empathy for their killed neighbors are now energized to retaliate, in order to make their neighbors more protected and safe, by killing random people in Country A for whom they have no empathy for
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That only scratches the surface. If a political wind sweeps the country and a temporary strong partisan lean occurs, the only thing which prevents it from destroying the nation overnight is the supreme court and it's lack of accountability to the political legislative and executive branches. BUT the court can only protect people from if someone with valid legal standing brings a suit and that isn't likely to happen when they don't remember anything.
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Most people can remember situations when ... the first time they had sex ...
So you're saying I can forget the clumsiness, the laughing, and the embarrassing trip to the emergency room?
Re: Emotional memory (Score:2)
Re:Terrifying discovery (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, being able to improve long term memory has a bunch of nice implications. I would like to retain more of what I read, for example.
Re:Terrifying discovery (Score:4, Interesting)
If we want to remember stuff, we have to put in the necessary & sufficient work; that's what education & training are all about. Unfortunately, the vast majority of practitioners in education & training know little about what actually helps us to remember stuff & frequently rely heavily on strategies that are sub-optimal & sometimes counter-productive. Here's a couple of free websites, set up & run by scientists who study how to remember stuff better. They're aimed at teachers, students, & parents:
The Learning Scientists (originally called "ace that test"): https://www.learningscientists... [learningscientists.org]
Retrieval practice ("originally called the "testing effect"): https://www.retrievalpractice.... [retrievalpractice.org]
However, these strategies are not so easy to implement. They're a bit like going to the gym & eating healthily; we know they're good ideas in principle but they're hard work, inconvenient, require us to stick to routines, & sometimes make us feel bad so we tend to avoid them. That's why it's so important that educators, trainers, institutions, instructional designers, & curriculum developers have a good working knowledge of the science of learning. Currently, there is no requirement & some faculties of education actually oppose it, without giving evidence-informed, coherent, cohesive reasoning as to why. We really, really need education & training to grow up & become a more "scientific" profession, like medicine & engineering.
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Sorry but there's ain't no magic solution to (useful) learning.
Not yet, no.
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Re: Terrifying discovery (Score:2)
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How about that?
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"I was afraid simpler minds would see TFA and think it's free real estate physiologically."
Why do anonymous cowards think their insults count for anything? Who cares what a coward thinks?
"It might work fine if you trade out the memory of your mother's lullaby. It might get you alzheimer's 5 years earlier if you don't."
There's no reason to believe you are trading memories. Even if it's a possibility, given that some people have great memories and don't have alzheimer's, it's obviously not inevitable.
Re: Terrifying discovery (Score:1)
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Yep. I see "less deadly" weapons, torture and worse. The usual psychos that have no moral compass will make it happen.
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Literally part of any cure for Alzheimer's etc.
No discovery in history has ever come without any downside whatsoever.
But if you want to see how/why Alzheimer's and other dementia operates, you need to know what proteins are involved, and then you can trace those back to origin to see if they are part of the reason that things start to fail, then you can look at those and see if you can find a way to keep producing them, etc.
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That MIGHT be correct, but I think it likely that Alzheimer's operates through a different mechanism. At least mainly.
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"Alzheimer's disease is thought to be caused by the abnormal build-up of proteins in and around brain cells"
It's not the direct mechanism talked about here, but it's basically caused by the same kinds of things happening, to the same kinds of cells.
Likely this protein is also being blocked because of the proteins that are suspected (only suspected!) of being the ones gumming up the brain cells - which may be why memory-forming is affected.
How would you find that out? Treat Alzheimer's patients to provide t
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People keep reinventing the neuralizer, then forgetting all about it.
Yes, history is full of terrifying discoveries. (Score:1)
I happen to think Albert Einstein had one of the greatest minds in human history - but his big discovery e=mc^2 is utterly horrifying. Sure, we could've done something good with the idea, but the first practical application of this discovery was the near-complete annihilation of the population of two cities. On the other hand, now we can harness the power of the strong interactive force to provide energy for our society.
Even a blade is a terrible thing. In the hands of a madman, it can cause untold pain
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I see beneficial use cases of erasing memories. Rape victims or any others that suffer from PTSD for example could greatly benefit from a therapy that can do this safely.
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We, as a race, always manage to turn our scientific discoveries to the worst possible applications.
Discovering how long term memory works, and how to erase it, is just asking for the worst possible scenarios.
This is a problem with politics not a problem with science or engineering.
Lab mice (Score:1)
Pinky: "What are we going to do today, Brain?"
Brain: "Why, the same thing we did yesterday, Pinky!"
Pinky: "Uh, I forgot what we did, Brain."
Brain: "That's right, we test & perfect our memory eraser! Glad to see it shows promise. Now sit still..."
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One of my good friends used to say the human race was doomed, if and when we really figured out how our brains work at a deep/comprehensive level.
I don't know if I agree or not? But we do have an established idea that it's our minds and our thoughts and ability to reason that define us as humans and as individuals, and it's also a presumption that our thoughts and memories are the only possessions we have that can't just be taken away from us.
If we reach a point where we can somehow read/download other peop
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but you did her anyhow
thanks for the memories... (Score:1)
A much better memory chemical is ... um what was I saying?
Interesting discovery (Score:2)
That much of concrete memory is a brain function was already known. But knowing a mechanism allows separating the parts where we have a good idea how they work from the others easier.
All that info, nothing to improve memory (Score:2)
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You can't run without being able to walk, and you can't walk until you have taken one step. Understanding how things work will help develop the positive applications that will come from this stuff.
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> You can't run without being able to walk
That is not true.
1. Conditions like muscular dystrophy or multiple sclerosis can affect the ability to walk while still allowing for running.
2. Injuries can sometimes make walking painful or difficult while allowing for running.
3. Anxiety or phobias, can also prevent walking, but allow running.
4. Some developmental issues can lead to atypical motor skills which allow running, but not walking.
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I discovered this long ago. (Score:2)
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I think it is the other way around.
When you remember everything, you remember every little mean thing that was done to you and that causes traumas to collect.
And when you forget everything that happened 5 minutes ago, no matter what is done to you, no traumas are formed.
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Tip:
1) you distract your focus as much as possible after Trauma. a study on playing tetris demonstrated this. It prevents you from making a memory by focusing intensely on it over and over like one tends to do-- study the source of the trauma which is NOT what you want to do.
2) do not get sleep that day. maybe another day too. Long term memories are cemented with proper sleep; disrupting sleep impacts the forming of long term memories. also studies back this.
3) prevent rehashing it because spaced repetitio
Trauma Also Works (Score:2)