For The First Time, Scientists Capture Brain Making Memories In Real-Time (VIDEO)
We talk a lot about making memories to last a lifetime... but how does the brain actually make memories?
Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine used advanced imaging techniques to visualize how the brain turns molecules into memories. In research conducted on mice, scientists put fluorescent "tags" on beta-actin mRNA, the "molecules crucial to making memories."
From the college's official announcement:
"In the research described in the two Science papers, the Einstein researchers stimulated neurons from the mouse's hippocampus, where memories are made and stored, and then watched fluorescently glowing beta-actin mRNA molecules form in the nuclei of neurons and travel within dendrites, the neuron's branched projections. They discovered that mRNA in neurons is regulated through a novel process described as "masking" and "unmasking," which allows beta-actin protein to be synthesized at specific times and places and in specific amounts."
In layman's terms: "It kind of sounds like a computer storing data bits into a hard drive!" Gizmodo writes.
WATCH:
This is the first time neuroscientists have witnessed the memory-making process in real-time in a live animal.
Learn more about how the brain makes memories:
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