How the Binding of Two Brain Molecules Creates Memories That Last a Lifetime

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When Toad Was about to be 3 years old, his 4 -year -old sister died in Liukemia. “An empty bedroom next to me. A swing set with two seats instead of one,” he remembered the chronic signs of his presence at home. “This was not the missing person – for whom I had only one memory.” That memory, unconscious but permanent, was set at the bottom of their house. A young man told his sister to read a book to his sister and he brushed him: “Go to your mother.” The saactor shone and climbed the stairs in the kitchen.

It is noteworthy that after more than 60 years, the Sactor remembers this passing childhood moment at all. The wonderful nature of memory is a physical trace of every memory that is printed in the brain tissue by neuron molecular appliances. How the essence of a living moment is encoded and later recovered is one of the centrally unparalleled questions in the neuroscience.

Sactor became a neurologist in search of a reply. In Brooklyn’s State University of New York Dowstate he studied molecules involved in neuronal connections to maintain underlying memories. The question that always attracted his attention to the question was First published in 1984 By renowned biologist Francis Creek: When the body molecules deteriorate and replaced within a few days, weeks or, most months, how can memories run for years even for years?

In 2024, to work as well as a team that includes its long -time associate Andre FentonA neurologist at the University of New York, Sactor gave a possible explanation on a paper published The progress of scienceThe Researchers discovered it An endless bond between two proteins Connecting to the synapse is related to strengthening, which is the connection between the neurons. Synaptic strength is considered to be basic for memory. As these proteins are reduced, the new ones take their place in an attached molecule, which maintains the integrity of the bond and therefore memories.

In 1984, Francis Creek describes a biological condram: memories in the past years, when most molecules decreased during the day or week. “So how is the memory stored in the brain so that its trace is relatively resistant to the molecular turnover?” He wrote in nature.

Photograph: National Library of Medicine/Source of Science

Researchers have presented “an extremely sight incision case” that “memory storage requires interaction between these two molecules,” said Carl Peter GisKings College is a neurobologist in London who was not involved in this work. Searchs provide a compulsory response to Crick’s hesitation, rewriting isolated timescales to explain how efemral molecules maintain a lifetime permanent memory.

Molecule

At the beginning of his career, the Sactor discovered a one that transforms the rest of his life. After studying under the molecular memory of the University of Columbia, under the James Schwarz of Pioneer, he opened his lab in Sunny Dowestot to search for a molecule that could help continue long -term memories.

The molecules he were looking for will remain in the brain synapse. In 1949, psychologist Donald Heb suggested that repeated activation neurons strengthened the connections between them, or such as neurobiologist Carla Shatz: “The rooms fire together, shot together on the wire.” In these decades, many studies have suggested that the connection between neurons that contain memories, the better the memory will be.

In the early sixties, in a dish of his lab, the saccor stimulated a piece of hippocampus in a rat – a small area of ​​the brain was associated with memories of events and places, such as the interaction saccor with his sister, as well as the neural paths, which made the neural paths active. Then he searched for any molecular changes that took place. Every time he repeated the test, he saw the advanced level of a certain protein in the synapse. “For the fourth time, I was, that’s what,” he said.