trendingNowenglish1448449

Research holds out hope for patients who have lost memory

The research by scientists from UCLA and Australia may help people who have lost their ability to remember due to brain injury or disease.

Research holds out hope for patients who have lost memory

A new study may potentially help people who have lost their ability to remember due to brain injury or disease.

By examining how we learn and store memories, scientists from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and from Australia have shown that the way the brain first captures and encodes a situation or event is quite different from how it processes subsequent similar events.

"Memories are formed in a part of the brain known as the hippocampus, a sea horse-shaped structure that plays critical roles in processing, storing and recalling information," said study co-author Michael Fanselow, UCLA professor of psychology and a member of the UCLA Brain Research Institute. "The hippocampus is very susceptible to damage through stroke or lack of oxygen and is critically involved in Alzheimer's disease."

When memory is first formed, a small protein involved in synaptic-transmission — the NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartic acid) receptor — is indispensable to the process, said study co-author Bryce Vissel, group leader of the neuroscience research programme at Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research.

Activation of the NMDA receptor allows calcium to enter a neuron, and calcium permeability enables a chain of molecular reactions that help encode experience and consolidate memory, Fanselow and Vissel said.

Learning theorists have assumed that learning cannot occur without NMDA receptors. But the new findings showed that NMDA receptors are not essential in 'second-learning', when the rules of 'first-learning' are applied to new yet similar scenarios.

Instead, another class of receptors known as AMPA (a-amino-3-hydroxyl-5-methyl-4-isoxazole-propionate) receptors, also calcium permeable, appears to take up the task.

Though the findings are still preliminary, Fanselow is optimistic about what it could mean for people whose memory formation has been impaired.

"The system we are working with is critically involved in Alzheimer's disease and other kinds of brain deficit memory impairment," he said.

"This is just the start. We have uncovered a mechanism that contributes to learning and memory, and we now have to figure out what to do with it.

"We might now have a target for drugs that are different from the standard class of cognitive enhancers," he said.

"We can see the possibilities for different styles of training that better activate this newly discovered mechanism."

The study was published in the online journal PLoS ONE, a publication of the Public Library of Science.

LIVE COVERAGE

TRENDING NEWS TOPICS
More