Lost Memories Reactivated in Mice

Using optogenetics, researchers excite selected neurons to reinstate a fear memory that had been blocked.

kerry grens
| 2 min read

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WIKIMEDIA, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTHThe brain may continue to harbor old memories, even if they can’t be recalled anymore, according to the results of a mouse study published this week (May 29) in Science. Scientists induced mice to have amnesia, then reactivated particular neurons that had been active during the formation of a memory, and the memory—fear of a cage—returned.

“Brain researchers have been divided for decades on whether amnesia is caused by an impairment in the storage of a memory, or in its recall,” Susumu Tonegawa, director of the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics and an author of the study, said in a press release. “Our conclusion is that in retrograde amnesia, past memories may not be erased, but could simply be lost and inaccessible for recall.”

Tonegawa and his colleagues identified genetically labeled neurons—called memory engram cells—that were active in mice during the formation of a memory, in particular, learning to fear a particular cage. Then they administered a chemical to induce amnesia in the mice shortly after the training (the drug blocks synapses from strengthening), and the animals no longer exhibited ...

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Meet the Author

  • kerry grens

    Kerry Grens

    Kerry served as The Scientist’s news director until 2021. Before joining The Scientist in 2013, she was a stringer for Reuters Health, the senior health and science reporter at WHYY in Philadelphia, and the health and science reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio. Kerry got her start in journalism as a AAAS Mass Media fellow at KUNC in Colorado. She has a master’s in biological sciences from Stanford University and a biology degree from Loyola University Chicago.

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