A team led by an Indian-origin neuroscientist has found a gene that “turns on” when memories are stored in the brain, a discovery they believe could help pinpoint the exact locations of memories in the brain.
It’s known that when one witnesses a new event, the brain encodes a memory of it by altering the connections between neurons. This needs turning on many genes in those neurons.
Now, neuroscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have identified a gene, called Npas4, which is very active in the hippocampus — a brain structure known to be critical in forming long-term memories.
The findings, described in the journal Science, would be a breakthrough in pinpointing the exact locations of memories in the brain and might open up new avenues for altering or even creating memory, the researchers said. “We think of Npas4 as the initial trigger that comes on, and then in turn, in the right spot in the brain, it activates all these other downstream targets,” Kartik Ramamoorthi, a MIT graduate student who led the study, said in a statement.
“Eventually they are going to modify synapses in a way that’s likely changing synaptic inhibition or some other process that we are trying to figure out,” Ramamoorthi said.
The scientists, who carried out their research on mice, found that Npas4 turns on a series of other genes that modify the brain’s internal wiring by adjusting the strength of synapses, or connections between neurons. “This is a gene that can connect from experience to the eventual changing of the circuit,” said Yingxi Lin, a member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Resear-ch at MIT where the study was carried out.