Abstract
The mechanism of memory remains one of the great unsolved problems of biology. Grappling with the question more than a hundred years ago, the German zoologist Richard Semon formulated the concept of the engram, lasting connections in the brain that result from simultaneous “excitations”, whose precise physical nature and consequences were out of reach of the biology of his day. Neuroscientists now have the knowledge and tools to tackle this question, however, and this Forum brings together leading contemporary views on the mechanisms of memory and what the engram means today.
Highlights
The mechanism of memory remains one of the great unsolved problems of biology
The theme of persistent synaptic changes and their causal role in memory is taken up by Tobias Bonhoeffer, who summarizes the evidence that dendritic spines, where excitatory synapses are located, represent the basic cellular unit for memory; long-term memory is stored in a set of spines that are formed or modified during learning and these changes may persist throughout the animal’s life
They propose that such epigenetic modification represents a priming event during the initial phase of memory formation; memory retrieval would trigger the expression of the primed genes, leading to protein synthesis and synaptic modification at individual synaptic units
Summary
Mu-ming Poo1*, Michele Pignatelli2, Tomás J. Ryan2,3, Susumu Tonegawa2,3*, Tobias Bonhoeffer4, Kelsey C. Martin5, Andrii Rudenko6, Li-Huei Tsai6, Richard W. Tsien7, Gord Fishell7, Caitlin Mullins7, J. Tiago Gonçalves8, Matthew Shtrahman8, Stephen T. Johnston8, Fred H. Gage8, Yang Dan9, John Long7, György Buzsáki7 and Charles Stevens8
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