Sidebar: Society for Neuroscience
The relationship between short-term and long-term memory, as well as many other basic questions about learning and various forms of memories, have mystified psychologists and neuroscientists for decades. But now, new biological tools are helping to confirm long-held hunches about the molecular mechanisms governing memory and learning. Studies involving a menagerie of mutant mice and fruit flies-as well as the marine snail Aplysia and viral vectors-are shedding light on the biochemical mechanisms at work in these basic cognitive processes.
Neuroscience researchers point to a number of factors that account for this outpouring of information. "Our ability to use the expertise of molecular biology to ask very specific questions about neuronal function explains the explosion of new understanding we have," remarks Erin Schuman, an assistant professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology. "The budding marriage of molecular biology and traditional animal behavior studies has contributed ...
