Monday, March 30, 2015

Scientific American- Memory May Not Be Where We Thought It Was

Memories May Not Live in Neurons’ Synapses

The finding could mean recollections are more enduring than expected and disrupt plans for PTSD treatments
neurons


Do memories live outside neurons or within them?

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As intangible as they may seem, memories have a firm biological basis. According to textbook neuroscience, they form when neighboring brain cells send chemical communications across the synapses, or junctions, that connect them. Each time a memory is recalled, the connection is reactivated and strengthened. The idea that synapses store memories has dominated neuroscience for more than a century, but a new study by scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, may fundamentally upend it: instead memories may resideinside brain cells. If supported, the work could have major implications for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition marked by painfully vivid and intrusive memories.
More than a decade ago scientists began investigating the drug propranolol for the treatment of PTSD. Propranolol was thought to prevent memories from forming by blocking production of proteins required for long-term storage. Unfortunately, the research quickly hit a snag. Unless administered immediately after the traumatic event, the treatment was ineffective. Lately researchers have been crafting a work-around: evidence suggests that when someone recalls a memory, the reactivated connection is not only strengthened but becomes temporarily susceptible to change, a process called memory reconsolidation. Administering propranolol (and perhaps also therapy, electrical stimulation and certain other drugs) during this window can enable scientists to block reconsolidation, wiping out the synapse on the spot.
The possibility of purging recollections caught the eye of David Glanzman, a neurobiologist at U.C.L.A., who set out to study the process in Aplysia, a sluglike mollusk commonly used in neuroscience research. Glanzman and his team zappedAplysia with mild electric shocks, creating a memory of the event expressed as new synapses in the brain. The scientists then transferred neurons from the mollusk into a petri dish and chemically triggered the memory of the shocks in them, quickly followed by a dose of propranolol.
Initially the drug appeared to confirm earlier research by wiping out the synaptic connection. But when cells were exposed to a reminder of the shocks, the memory came back at full strength within 48 hours. “It was totally reinstated,” Glanzman says. “That implies to me that the memory wasn't stored in the synapse.” The results were recently published in the online open-access journal eLife.
If memory is not located in the synapse, then where is it? When the neuroscientists took a closer look at the brain cells, they found that even when the synapse was erased, molecular and chemical changes persisted after the initial firing within the cell itself. The engram, or memory trace, could be preserved by these permanent changes. Alternatively, it could be encoded in modifications to the cell's DNA that alter how particular genes are expressed. Glanzman and others favor this reasoning.
Eric R. Kandel, a neuroscientist at Columbia University and recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on memory, cautions that the study's results were observed in the first 48 hours after treatment, a time when consolidation is still sensitive.
Though preliminary, the results suggest that for people with PTSD, pill popping will most likely not eliminate painful memories. “If you had asked me two years ago if you could treat PTSD with medication blockade, I would have said yes, but now I don't think so,” Glanzman says. On the bright side, he adds, the idea that memories persist deep within brain cells offers new hope for another disorder tied to memory: Alzheimer's.
FURTHER READINGS AND CITATIONSScientificAmerican.com/apr2015/advances
This article was originally published with the title "The Persistence of Memory."
 
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stargeneMarch 29, 2015, 2:29 AM
For what it's worth, a paper titled "Cytoskeletal Signaling: Is Memory Encoded
in Microtubule Lattices by CaMKII Phosphorylation?" is at
By Craddock, Tuszynski and Hameroff.
This work suggests neuronal microtubule chemistry as a possible basis for
memory storage and retrieval. Worth a shot?
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CreatorCoachMarch 29, 2015, 9:55 AM
The issue with PTSD is not to remove a memory but to take the emotional response from it. Keep the learning but remove the repeated feelings. I regularly use Integrated Eye Movement Therapy to take the heat out of awful memories so that the client is no longer affected by them. The client is aware of them - this happened - but is not suffering any more from the recall of events. This creates peace and change. I am not sure what is happening biologically but recently I keep thinking that memory is in the body... therefore knowledge is in the body. This discovery that "memory" is in the cells confirms this for me. The brain, the neurons rather, are processing current information and current access of memories/knowledge/maps of the world. This process is malleable and dynamic and enables me in my client work to produce instant concrete change in the way people respond and can then behave. Freedom from phobias, trauma, beliefs, events and the story of a person;s life results. Further discussion.... depression is a narrative. :)
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vevamikaMarch 29, 2015, 2:28 PM
I also believe the memory is in the body and is aside of intention and it is not just the neurons that are involved. I also think that the memories are not stored in one place but are expressed and that is a part of what a memory consists of: the same direction of concentration. Like a choreography.
The scale that is involved with memories must be smaller than neurons. A solution could be found if a new path iof that memory is expressed but in reverse order ( or another order and then reassembled). Forward expression is what is known by the body's memory and so it can not be undone. It already occupies that space.
The initiation of the memories must be stored in the cells in the different body organs. Intention is behind it all, and the observing eyes (literally the eyes or perception of what is) alter or enhance the experience, because observance is attention (a direction), and attention or intention is a message sent out and it will heat up a path in the body that is - a physical memory supported by a neuronal path. I hope there is a solution soon cause the older we get the smarter we get and the more inflamed and the harder it is to stop burning out, swelling up because the path of least resistance is the normal optimization direction.
Seems to me that each memory is a code that consists a set of points and paths in the entire body and then is is perceived by the brain for decoding.
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vevamikaMarch 29, 2015, 2:35 PM
And don't forget, matter is memory expressed in the next frequency level :)
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vevamika stargeneMarch 29, 2015, 2:37 PM
Nice one
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