In The News

Neuroscientists discover neurological hyperactivity that produces disordered thinking.

From Science Friday: Reporting in Science, researchers write of linking a mouse’s innocuous memory of a room with a more fearful memory of getting an electric shock—causing the mouse to freeze in fear upon seeing the safe room. Study author Steve Ramirez of M.I.T. and memory researcher Mark Mayford of The Scripps Research Institute discuss the implications for modifying human memories…

The vagaries of human memory are notorious. A friend insists you were at your 15th class reunion when you know it was your 10th. You distinctly remember that another friend was at your wedding, until she reminds you that you didn’t invite her. Or, more seriously, an eyewitness misidentifies the perpetrator of a terrible crime.

Not only are false, or mistaken, memories common in normal life, but researchers have found it relatively easy to generate false memories of words and images in human subjects. But exactly what goes on in the brain when mistaken memories are formed has remained mysterious.

Now scientists at the Riken-M.I.T. Center for Neural Circuit Genetics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they have created a false memory in a mouse, providing detailed clues to how such memories may form in human brains…

Picower Institute neuroscientists use single dose of experimental drug; could prove promising for treatment of autism symptoms.

Neuroscientists at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory report in the March 18 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that they have reversed autism symptoms in adult mice with a single dose of an experimental drug.

The work from the laboratory of Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa, the Picower Professor in the Department of Biology and a principal investigator at the Picower Institute, points to potential targets for drugs that may one day improve autism symptoms such as hyperactivity, repetitive behaviors and seizures in humans by modifying molecular mechanisms underlying the disease.

“These findings suggest a possible novel therapeutic target for the treatment of Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) — the most common inherited form of autism and intellectual disability,” said Eric Klann, a professor of neural science at New York University…

MIT researchers identify, label and manipulate the neuronal network encoding a memory.

Memory is one of the enduring mysteries of neuroscience. How does the brain form a memory, store it, and then retrieve it later on? After a century of research, some answers began to emerge. It is now widely believed that memory formation involves the strengthening of connections between a network of nerve cells, and that memory recall occurs when that network is reactivated. There was, however, no direct evidence for this.

Now, researchers at MIT show that the cellular networks that encode memories can not only be identified, but also manipulated. In a spectacular study published online last week in the journal Nature, they report that they have labelled the network of neurons encoding a specific memory, and then reactivated the same network by artificial means to induce memory recall.

Where goest thou, O thought?

The search for the memory trace, or ‘engram,’ began in the 1920s, with the work of a Canadian neurosurgeon named Wilder Penfield, who pioneered a technique for electrically stimulating the surface of the brain. Penfield’s aim was to identify and remove brain tumours, or abnormal tissue that caused severe epileptic seizures, while sparing surrounding tissue that controls essential functions like speech or movement…

Nature’s neuroscience podcast reporter Kerri Smith interviews Susumu Tonegawa via telephone regarding the research paper, “Optogenetic stimulation of a hippocampal engram activates fear memory recall,” by Xu Liu et al., which appeared in the April 19 issue of Nature. (The interview begins at 0:42)

Cambridge, Ma – Researchers at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory report for the first time that neurons at different stages of their life cycles may perform two separate functions…

Cambridge, Ma – In the moments after lightning streaks through the sky, we wait for the clap of thunder that experience has…

Cambridge, Ma – Neuroscientists at MIT’s Picower Institute of Learning and Memory have uncovered why relatively minor details of…