Scientists Find Proteins Responsible with Memory Gain and Loss

We could say that we are who we are thanks to our memories. If you lose the ability of remembering things, you are lost; you are nothing but an unknown individual, walking aimlessly in the world.

Sure, you might have your friends or family, but they might as well be strangers, the result would be the same to you. Memories have fascinated doctors, scientists, and psychologists for a very long time. They have been a source of mystery for a very long time. It is unknown where memories are formed in the brain, the way in which we remember certain things, and the way in which we lose them. The experts have worked a very long time on designing drugs which could help us with our memory: both with losing or gaining them. Yes they attempt to create drugs which can help you lose your memory, or only certain portions of it, just like in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Each of us might have memories which we want to get rid off, and it seems that we might be able to do that real soon. According to the scientists, our brains have a certain molecule which has the power of erasing certain memories.

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However, there is a catch, as this molecule has the power of strengthening and augmenting the memories months after they have been deleted. Todd Sacktor, who is a researcher at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, said that there are certain ways in which we can enhance our memorizing abilities. For example, one good thing to do would be to take coffee prior to trying to memorize something. Another thing would be to study or read what we want to memorize, prior to going to bed. These are well known tricks, but Sacktor said that our brain is more powerful than that, and that there is a possibility for us to make the brain remember certain pieces of information, months after we have memorized them. The process would be similar to searching for something in a hard drive. Sacktor said that our brains contain enzymes which have the sole responsibility of remembering things which we have memorized a long time ago. Their task is to manage the long time memory. Sacktor together with Yadin Dudai of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, his co-researcher, analyzed the brain’s capacity of remembering distant memories.

They conducted the experiments on rats, and surprisingly enough, they can be applied on humans as well. They made the rats to associate a certain taste or smell with the feeling of nausea, something which often happens in the case of the humans. For example you might eat a certain food which made you sick for various days afterwards. It is very likely that every time when you will smell or think about that food, the feeling of nausea will come back to haunt you. The same thing usually happens when you get drunk from a certain type of drink, only to suffer from a very serious case of hangover the following day. Now, these researchers trained the mice to make the association between certain foods and nausea, thus making the animals avoid the foods at all costs. Then they injected them with the protein kinase M zeta, or PKMzeta. They inserted the protein in a virus which had the task of preventing the mice from feeling sick when they get in contact with that particular type of food. The virus either enhanced the natural protein which was present in the bodies of the mice, or created a mutant version. Regardless of the kind of the protein, the result was the same; both of them managed to stop the feeling of nausea in the mice.

The interesting thing was that the enzyme also increased the mice’ natural ability of remembering things, while it managed to block certain memories in the same time. If used in the case of the humans, the potential of this vaccine would be immense. People who have suffered a trauma could take these medications in order to forget them forever. The scientists were surprised to see that this protein behaved in a different manner than the other proteins which were known for their quality of memory enhancers. The regular proteins which were used for memory consolidation took regular memories and kept them stored in the brain for a long period of time. The PKMzeta seems to be able to keep these memories alive in the brain, even if they are no longer used. You might not use or need those memories, but they are in the brain, and when you will need them, you will have no problem accessing them.

It seems that for a very long period of time, the concept about memories was wrong. Scientists believed that the memory is nothing but a function of the brain cells; that we remember things when these cells have a connection. They used to believe that remembering things, was a passive activity, and that we could do nothing about it. We relied on the connections of the cells and that the people, who had a better cell connection, had a better memory. Well, it seems that being able to remember certain things, is an active process, and that we might be able to do something about it. We do not remember things just because the cells are connected; we remember things because each cell has a memory of its own.

It seems that memories are stored in different parts of the brain. Some of the memory is started in a certain part, and it acts as the RAM memory from the computer. Every time the computer is turned off, the memory from the RAM is lost. However, there is also the hard drive memory, and this type of memory lasts for a longer period of time. The memory located on the hard drive will remain there even when the computer is turned off. The scientists have stated that these drugs could be used in the future in order to help the patients who suffer from diseases such as amnesia, or Alzheimer’s disease. These patients could take the drug before the disease has reached its critical point, and thus, they will be able to remember things with much ease. However, so far, the drugs were efficient only for a short time. The mice were still able to remember the nausea feeling associated with the foods after a certain period of time.

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The scientists also said that they intend to use these drugs on the people who have certain phobias, or who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, or other similar conditions. The act of forgetting things is just as intriguing as the act of remembering certain pieces of information. There have been lots of debates about this subject as well. Some said that we forget only information which we find to be useless, but that is not true, because there are cases when we forget important information as well. It is true that some memories stick with us for our entire lives, such as the time when we had our first kiss, when something important or tragic happened to us, and so on. Others said that we forget something when we remember something new. Other people said that the memories, or the data which is stored in the brain, is simply lost after a certain period of time. It seems that they were wrong, as the old memories are in the brain for a very long period of time, and they can be “resurrected” with the aid of the proper enzymes. According to Yi Zhong, a neurogeneticist at Tsinghua University in Beijing, forgetting certain things is not a passive activity; it is an active one, just like the ability of creating and storing memories.

It seems that the reason why we forget is because of a protein called Rac. This protein becomes active after a certain period of time, and when it becomes active, we can no longer remember certain memories. When the development of the protein is blocked, we are able to remember things for a longer period of time. It seems that these proteins are influential when it comes to mental retardation in humans as well. Based on these pieces of information, the researchers might be able to use drugs both for deleting and for enhancing the memory. They might use the Rac protein in order to delete the memory and the PKMzeta one in order to enhance certain memories.