{"id":23477,"date":"2010-10-25T08:40:41","date_gmt":"2010-10-25T12:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=23477"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:39:59","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:39:59","slug":"how-memories-are-born","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/10\/how-memories-are-born\/","title":{"rendered":"How Memories Are Born"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Medical<\/a>
A medical illustration of the brain from National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When we experience something new, or wish to remember something important, groups of cells deep inside the center of our brains fire in unison as a new memory is born.<\/p>\n

The ability to encode memories is important if we wish to remember where we left our car keys, how to drive back to work in the morning, or the name of a new friend.\u00a0 But creating and storing new memories can be especially difficult for some older individuals and those with Alzheimer\u2019s disease and other forms of dementia.<\/p>\n

At the University of Connecticut, Professor Etan Markus<\/a>, a behavioral neuroscientist in the Department of Psychology, has found a way to improve memory encoding in older rats by stimulating a part of the brain called the medial septum with a drug that activates neurotransmitters critical to the creation of new memories.<\/p>\n

The research, published in the Journal of Neuroscience,<\/em> could have implications for older individuals with memory deficits and Alzheimer\u2019s patients, for whom one of the biggest concerns is their ability to remember their surroundings so they don\u2019t get lost. The brains of rats and human beings are nearly identical in terms of developing and processing memory.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow we get from one group of cells and a signal code for a location to the fact that I will or won\u2019t remember who you are tomorrow is one of the things I find most interesting,\u201d says Markus. \u201cHere in my lab, we work with older animals to see what\u2019s different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Markus cautions that his research is still preliminary and much more work needs to be done to clarify the medial septum\u2019s interaction with the hippocampus \u2013 the mind\u2019s nerve center for memory creation and spatial navigation \u2013 but he concedes that the initial results are encouraging.<\/p>\n

\"<p>Etan<\/a>
Professor Etan Markus (far right) in his lab with his students: (back row, from left) Matt Howe, a physiology and neurobiology and psychology junior, Sara Pallay, a pre veterinarian junior, Stephanie Bohannon, a psychology and political science junior, and Nickie Paul, a behavioral and neurological sciences graduate student; (front row, from left) Brandy Schmidt a behavioral and neurological sciences graduate student, Melissa Argraves, a psychology senior, and Emily Szkudlarek a psychology junior. Photo by Jessica Tommaselli.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dr. Simona Sava, a former graduate student in the lab (now at the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School), joined Markus in the research, which was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health<\/a>. UConn associate professors Monty Escabi<\/a> and James Chrobak<\/a> also assisted, as did graduate student Jamie Bunce. UConn\u2019s Department of Psychology is part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Markus\u2019s research focuses on a memory process known as mapping and remapping. When rats and human beings create a new memory, they are effectively forming a representation, or \u201cmapping\u201d that location or moment and encoding it in their brains. Using advanced monitoring technologies, Markus has been able to actually \u201chear\u201d place cells in a rat\u2019s mind firing as the animal creates a memory and encodes its route through a maze. The burst of place cell activity the rat experiences when it searches for a food source is conveyed as a staccato series of \u201cpops,\u201d like tiny firecrackers, when picked up by the high-tech monitors in the lab.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that older animals and people have a harder time creating new memories,\u201d Markus says. \u201cWhen the brain chooses to map or remap is important. You don\u2019t want to remap every time you get in your car. But you probably want your representation of the environment to change if you found a faster way to get to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Markus hypothesized that the medial septum modulates whether the hippocampus retrieves a prior memory (recalls an existing map) or encodes a new one through the activation of acetylcholine<\/a> or ACh, which is a major neurotransmitter in the central nervous system.\u00a0 Levels of ACh are reduced in aging and have been linked to age-related memory problems.<\/p>\n

To test this theory, the research team developed an experiment to see what happens to the brain representation when an older rat experiences a new route in a maze. The team also wanted to see what would happen if the rat repeated the route again, a few minutes later or the next day.<\/p>\n

They learned that older rats that were exposed to a cholinergic drug \u2013 in this case Carbachol \u2013 developed maps faster and were able to retrieve the map better the next day than a control group of older rats not exposed to the drug.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, Markus says, increasing ACh activity in the medial septum actually impaired younger rats and older rats that were already well-trained to follow a certain path to food in a maze. Markus says the exposure to Carbachol appears to have over-stimulated the mapping process so that their brains were re-mapping more than they should.<\/p>\n

The medial septum research focused solely on\u00a0 the brain\u2019s response to a new environment.\u00a0 As a follow up, Markus, together with graduate students Tara Jacobson and Brandy Schmidt and a number of undergraduate students, and in collaboration with Chrobak, is testing memory activity in older rats. The research team is currently determining the effects of Physostigmine (another cholinergic drug) on the rats\u2019 ability to learn a new route. They predict that cholinergic stimulation will help older rats when they need to learn something new, but be detrimental if they need to remember something already stored in their brain.<\/p>\n

When it comes to humans, prior research by other scientists involving the stimulation of the human cholinergic nervous system produced relatively poor results. Markus believes his recent research explains why.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we believe is that when you\u2019re improving the bad stuff you\u2019re also screwing up the good stuff,\u201d Markus says. \u201cThis drug needs to be on board only in situations where there may be a memory deficit, and it\u2019s most useful only the moment you need to learn something new.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Early findings from a UConn study show promise for improving memory function in older individuals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[44],"class_list":["post-23477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-20 21:47:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23477"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37065,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23477\/revisions\/37065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23477"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=23477"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}