Has the scent of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies ever taken you back to afternoons at your grandmother’s house? Has an old song ever brought back memories of a first date? The ability to remember relationships between unrelated items (an odor and a location, a song and an event) is known as associative memory.
Psychologists began studying associative memory in the 1800s, with William James describing the phenomenon in his 1890 classic The Principles of Psychology. Scientists today agree that the structures responsible for the formation of associative memory are found in the medial temporal lobe, or the famous “memory center” of the brain, but the particular cells involved, and how those cells are controlled, have remained a mystery until now.
Neuroscientists have discovered specific types of neurons within the memory center of the brain that are responsible for acquiring new associative memories. Additionally, they have discovered how these associative memory neurons are controlled. We rely on associative memories in our everyday lives and this research is an important step in understanding the detailed mechanism of how these types of memories are formed in the brain.
“Although associative memory is one of the most basic forms of memory in our everyday life, mechanisms underlying associative memory remain unclear” said lead researcher.
The study published in the journal Nature, reports for the first time, that specific cells in the lateral entorhinal cortex of the medial temporal lobe, called fan cells, are required for the acquisition of new associative memories and that these cells are controlled by dopamine, a brain chemical known to be involved in our experience of pleasure or reward.
In the study, researchers used electrophysiological recordings and optogenetics to record and control activity from fan cells in mice as they learn to associate specific odors with rewards. This approach led researchers to discover that fan cells compute and represent the association of the two new unrelated items (odor and reward). These fan cells are required for successful acquisition of new associative memories. Without these cells, pre-learned associations can be retrieved, but the new associations cannot be acquired. Additionally acquiring new associations also requires dopamine.
“We never expected that dopamine is involved in the memory circuit. However, when the evidence accumulated, it gradually became clear that dopamine is involved,” said the author. “These experiments were like a detective story for us, and we are excited about the results.”
This discovery is an important piece in the puzzle of understanding how memories are formed in the brain and lays a foundation on which other researchers can continue to build. Associative memory abilities are known to decline in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s Disease. Understanding the neurobiological mechanism of how these memories are formed is the first step to developing therapeutics to slow the loss of associative memory abilities in Alzheimer’s Disease.
https://news.uci.edu/2021/09/22/new-research-sniffs-out-how-associative-memories-are-formed/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03948-8
Dopamine involved in associative memory encoding
- 1,237 views
- Added
Edited
Latest News
TB blood test which could d…
By newseditor
Posted 27 Mar
Propionate supplementation…
By newseditor
Posted 27 Mar
Role of human Kallistatin i…
By newseditor
Posted 26 Mar
Addressing both flu and COV…
By newseditor
Posted 26 Mar
How the brain senses body p…
By newseditor
Posted 26 Mar
Other Top Stories
Attention recruits frontal cortex in human infants
Read more
Early life stress in neurons is mediated by epigenetic mechanism
Read more
Negative mood linked to prolonged amygdala activity
Read more
How the brain understands sentences
Read more
Does 'harsh parenting' lead to smaller brains?
Read more
Protocols
All-optical presynaptic pla…
By newseditor
Posted 23 Mar
Epigenomic tomography for p…
By newseditor
Posted 20 Mar
A mouse DRG genetic toolkit…
By newseditor
Posted 17 Mar
An optogenetic method for t…
By newseditor
Posted 13 Mar
Profiling native pulmonary…
By newseditor
Posted 08 Mar
Publications
Balancing neuronal activity…
By newseditor
Posted 28 Mar
OSBP-mediated PI(4)P-choles…
By newseditor
Posted 28 Mar
Integrated plasma proteomic…
By newseditor
Posted 27 Mar
APP antisense oligonucleoti…
By newseditor
Posted 27 Mar
Targeting Erbin-mitochondri…
By newseditor
Posted 27 Mar
Presentations
Hydrogels in Drug Delivery
By newseditor
Posted 12 Apr
Lipids
By newseditor
Posted 31 Dec
Cell biology of carbohydrat…
By newseditor
Posted 29 Nov
RNA interference (RNAi)
By newseditor
Posted 23 Oct
RNA structure and functions
By newseditor
Posted 19 Oct
Posters
A chemical biology/modular…
By newseditor
Posted 22 Aug
Single-molecule covalent ma…
By newseditor
Posted 04 Jul
ASCO-2020-HEALTH SERVICES R…
By newseditor
Posted 23 Mar
ASCO-2020-HEAD AND NECK CANCER
By newseditor
Posted 23 Mar
ASCO-2020-GENITOURINARY CAN…
By newseditor
Posted 23 Mar