KARIM BENCHENANE, GAETAN DE LAVILLEON, MARIE LACROIX, CNRSThrough behavioral experimentation and neuronal manipulation, investigators from the French National Center for Scientific Research and their colleagues have created false memories in sleeping mice, leading the animals, after they’ve awoken, to seek out a place they once feared. Their results were published in Nature Neuroscience this week (March 9).
“The study shows that the emotional value of a particular [location] can be modified, and what is most critical is that this can happen in a subconscious, sleep state,” neuroscientist György Buzsáki of the New York University Neuroscience Institute who was not involved with the work told The Scientist.
“Scientists had thought that during sleep, representations of waking experiences get reactivated, and this finding clearly suggests this is the case,” said Kate Jeffery, a behavioral neuroscientist at University College London who also was not involved in the study.
ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FEDERALECommonly used antibiotics can disrupt mitochondrial function in plants, fruit flies, worms, mice, and human cells in culture, researchers from the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, and their colleagues showed in Cell Reports this week (March 12). The researchers noted their findings could have implications for, among other things, the use of these antibiotics, called tetracyclines, in livestock.
“This is a straightforward and clear story,” said Cole Haynes, who studies ...
