New Delhi : New research from the University of California indicates that lost memories can be restored. The findings offer some hope for patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
For decades, most neuroscientists have believed that memories are stored at the synapses — the connections between brain cells, or neurons — which are destroyed by Alzheimer’s disease. The new study provides evidence contradicting the idea that long-term memory is stored at synapses.
“Long-term memory is not stored at the synapse,” said David Glanzman, a senior author of the study, and a UCLA professor of integrative biology and physiology and of neurobiology. “That’s a radical idea, but that’s where the evidence leads. The nervous system appears to be able to regenerate lost synaptic connections,”The findings were published recently in eLife, a highly regarded open-access online science journal.
The team studies a type of marine snail called Aplysia to understand the animal’s learning and memory. Long-term memory is a function of the growth of new synaptic connections caused by the serotonin, said Glanzman, a member of the university’s Brain Research Institute. As long-term memories are formed, the brain creates new proteins that are involved in making new synapses. If that process is disrupted — for example by a concussion or other injury — the proteins may not be synthesised and long-term memories cannot form. Glanzman said there was no obvious pattern to which synapses stayed and which disappeared, which implied that memory is not stored in synapses. He said the research could have significant implications for people with Alzheimer’s disease. Specifically, just because the disease is known to destroy synapses in the brain doesn’t mean that memories are destroyed.
“As long as the neurons are still alive, the memory will still be there, which means you may be able to recover some of the lost memories in the early stages of Alzheimer’s,” he said.
