Modifications to chromosomes in “engram” neurons control the encoding and retrieval of memories.
Anne Trafton | MIT News Office
Publication Date:October 5, 2020
A new MIT study reveals that encoding memories in engram cells is controlled by large-scale remodeling of the proteins and DNA that make up cells’ chromatin. In this image of the brain, the hippocampus is the large yellow structure near the top. Green indicates neurons that were activated in memory formation; red shows the neurons that were activated in memory recall; blue shows the DNA of the cells; and yellow shows neurons that were activated in both memory formation and recall, and are thus considered to be the engram neurons
“This paper is the first to really reveal this very mysterious process of how different waves of genes become activated, and what is the epigenetic mechanism underlying these different waves of gene expression,” says Li-Huei Tsai, the director of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the senior author of the study. Asaf Marco, an MIT postdoc, is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Nature Neuroscience.