Vertebrate Physiology

Some of you have mastered the art of cramming for exams. But what really happens when we store a thought for a very short period of time? What are memories made of? We’ve come a long way in our understanding since Dean Martin’s 1955 hit song. After looking at single neurons in the prefrontal cortex of mice, researchers at UT Southwestern have identified a specific receptor that drives short-term memory storage. Even more interestingly, they used dopamine and cocaine to simulate the effects of addiction on momentary recall. Curious about what happened? This article gives a great summary of their recently published findings in Nature Neuroscience.

Speaking of memory…do you remember our lecture on the hippocampus? Another study at the University of California looked at long-term recall and the involvement of specific brain structures. In light of what we learned in class, try to reason through their results.

One powerful aspect of neurobiology is the wide range of approaches we can use to answer key questions. Both of these research teams wondered “how do we store memories?” While the first study chose to look at single cells, the latter looked at whole brains. Integrating both micro and macro results gives us a more accurate depiction of how our brains are processing information.

This is yet another great piece on the topic of memory. A group of German researchers noticed that particular patterns of brain waves predict which memories you will remember, and which you will forget.