How the binding of two brain molecules creates lifelong memories
Original version of This story Appears in The amount of magazines.
when Todd Sackter I was about to turn 3. His 4-year-old sister died of leukemia. “The empty bedroom next to me. A swing set with two seats, not one,” he said, recalling the prolonged traces of her presence in the house. “This missing person was there, but never spoken, but I had only one memory.” The faint but lasting memory was set in the nest downstairs of their home. A young bag asked his sister to read him, and she brushed him off: “Listen to your mother.” The bag ran up the stairs and up the stairs in the kitchen.
Over 60 years later, it’s amazing that Sacktor remembers this fleeting childhood moment. The surprising nature of memory is that all recollections are physical traces engraved in brain tissue by the molecular mechanisms of neurons. The nature of the moment of living is encoded and later searched continues to be one of the central, unanswered questions in neuroscience.
Sacktor became a neuroscientist to pursue answers. At the Downstate of New York State University in Brooklyn, he studies the molecules involved in maintaining the neural connections underlying memory. There were always questions that caught his attention. First clarified in 1984 By the well-known biologist Francis Crick: How can memories last for decades, decades, when the molecules of the body deteriorate and are replaced in weeks, weeks, or at most months?
Working with a team in 2024, including his longtime collaborators Andre FentonSacktor, a neuroscientist at New York University, provided a potential explanation in a paper published in Advances in science. Researchers discovered it Continuous binding between two proteins It is associated with strengthening synapses, a connection between neurons. Synaptic strengthening is considered to be the basis of memory formation. When these proteins deteriorate, new proteins are placed in connected molecular swaps to maintain binding integrity and therefore memory.
Researchers present “a very persuasive case.” “The interaction between these two molecules is required for memory storage.” Carl Peter Guisethe neurobiologist at King’s College London, was not involved in this work. The findings provide a compelling response to the Click dilemma and explain how temporal molecules can maintain lifelong memories by adjusting the timescale of discrepancies.
Molecular Memory
Early in his career, Sacktel made discoveries that would shape the rest of his life. After studying under Columbia University’s pioneer of molecular memory, James Schwartz, he opened his own lab in SUNY Downstate, searching for molecules that could help explain how long-term memory continues.
The molecule he was looking for is in the synapse of his brain. In 1949, psychologist Donald Heb proposed strengthening the relationships between neurons that repeatedly activate neurons. Since then, many studies have suggested that the stronger the connections between neurons that retain memory, the better the memory.
In the early 1990s, on a dish in his lab, Sacktel stimulated slices of the mouse hippocampus. This is a small area of the brain associated with memory of brain memory and interactions with nest sister, and activated neural pathways in a way that mimics memory and storage that mimics neural pathways. He then searched for the molecular changes that took place. With each repeat of the experiment, he saw the levels of certain proteins increase within the synapse. “By the fourth time, I was like this,” he said.