Scientists watch glowing molecules form memories in real time

We can all agree the physical implications of memories are greatly impressive. The way the brain has to work to actually make it all happen, very fascinating.

Recently scientists have found a way to actually see how memories form in real-time.

Indeed, neurons are incredibly sensitive to any kind of disruption, so observing them as they go about their memory-making work in living brain cells is no easy task. To overcome this, and to peer deep into neurons without harming them, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University developed a mouse model in which they fluorescently tagged all molecules of messenger RNA (mRNA) that code for beta-actin protein (proteins involved in cell structure and integrity).

Here's the video of the process in action:

To make this incredible video, the researchers stimulated neurons in the hippocampus of mice — the place where memories are made and stored. They watched fluorescently glowing beta-actin mRNA molecules form in the nuclei of neurons and travel within dendrites, the neuron's branched projections.

As they watched this, the scientists realized that mRNA in neurons have developed an ingenious and never-before-seen strategy for controlling how memory-forming proteins do their job. It's a novel process they describe as "masking" and "unmasking" — a process allowing beta-actin protein to be synthesized at specific times and places and in specific amounts.

Thought it was worth sharing with the ATS community.

StOrD

reply to post by St0rD


This is interesting.

Do you have link to a source by chance?

ETA: found it
www.einstein.yu.edu...

reply to post by St0rD


This is pretty neat. I can see it advancing to the point where all memories become optional. Out with the bad, replace with the good. I am scared at what version will be considered "good".

Edited

sligtlyskeptical
reply to post by St0rD

 

This is pretty neat. I can see it advancing to the point where all memories become optional. Out with the bad, replace with the good. I am scared at what version will be considered "good".

You're right.

And now that scientists think that past lives and memories can also be coded in our genes, that makes you wonder what could be the evil applications of this.

There's a whole universe in that tiny mice's nut...makes you think?

Absolutely fantastic..

Who'd have thunk; the human race discovering the cosmic puzzle of the body and mind.

Maybe our existence has a purpose. Maybe that purpose is knowledge...

St0rD

And now that scientists think that past lives and memories can also be coded in our genes, that makes you wonder what could be the evil applications of this.

That's right, I remember reading about this about six or seven years ago. I was more interested from the point of unwanted specific gene Make up, in that some of that type of gene can jump generations, and not be continuous in the meantime.

Simply amazing..................one does wonder what this knowledge holds for mankind...
a cure for altziemers maybe
a way to program the populace with standard memories possibly creating the anthill society the elites desperately seek......
probably................

sligtlyskeptical
reply to post by St0rD

 

This is pretty neat. I can see it advancing to the point where all memories become optional. Out with the bad, replace with the good. I am scared at what version will be considered "good".

Umm...yeah, that's easier said than done.

reply to post by St0rD


Maybe off-topic a tad- with apologies. I just have to say that your thread title gives me goosebumps. Really.

Scientists watch glowing molecules form memories in real time. My God, just saying those words makes me euphoric, giddy.

I have watched the same thing , sort of , and now- they're all grown up.

Lord, I miss the littles, sometimes.

reply to post by St0rD


Watched the vid, all seven seconds of a few little things going back and forth a couple of times. And from that scientists say they've seen the brain make a memory? Am I missing something? How do they know that a memory is being created, and what kind of memory is being made, according to the scientists? Are they just pushing for more grant money and speaking engagements by making up something and claiming it to be a breakthrough discovery? Those are my questions five.

Aleister
reply to post by St0rD

 

Watched the vid, all seven seconds of a few little things going back and forth a couple of times. And from that scientists say they've seen the brain make a memory? Am I missing something? How do they know that a memory is being created, and what kind of memory is being made, according to the scientists? Are they just pushing for more grant money and speaking engagements by making up something and claiming it to be a breakthrough discovery? Those are my questions five.

edit on 27-1-2014 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

Well from what I've understand, the mRNA mesenger molecules (fluorescent in the video) will move in neurons back and forth and will active the beta-actin protein (memory formation protein) when needed, which will trigger or form a memory.

In order words that means the mRNA molecule will mark the necessary protein in dendrites as a signal to form a memory.

Aleister
reply to post by St0rD

 

Watched the vid, all seven seconds of a few little things going back and forth a couple of times. And from that scientists say they've seen the brain make a memory? Am I missing something? How do they know that a memory is being created, and what kind of memory is being made, according to the scientists? Are they just pushing for more grant money and speaking engagements by making up something and claiming it to be a breakthrough discovery? Those are my questions five.

edit on 27-1-2014 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

yeah. what aleister said.

it seems to me that the experiment begins on the assumption that memories are stores in neural cells.

St0rD

Aleister
reply to post by St0rD

 

Watched the vid, all seven seconds of a few little things going back and forth a couple of times. And from that scientists say they've seen the brain make a memory? Am I missing something? How do they know that a memory is being created, and what kind of memory is being made, according to the scientists? Are they just pushing for more grant money and speaking engagements by making up something and claiming it to be a breakthrough discovery? Those are my questions five.

edit on 27-1-2014 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

Well from what I've understand, the mRNA mesenger molecules (fluorescent in the video) will move in neurons back and forth and will active the beta-actin protein (memory formation protein) when needed, which will trigger or form a memory.

In order words that means the mRNA molecule will mark the necessary protein in dendrites as a signal to form a memory.

A memory which would cover, say (just to pick a number at random), seven seconds, would include full perceptives of touch, sight, hearing, smell, movement in space, emotion, processing of information about body placement, full recording of sequence, and probably two dozen other factors I could list given time, and all of that is carried by those molecules meandering rather slowly up and about the neurons? People who can access Eidetic memories can run back all of these things when remembering a situation. I'm guessing that much more is at work in the process of forming memories than slow-moving molecules which have to be working at a much faster clip micro-second by micro-second for a lifetime (questions on that last, how long do these molecules themselves live? And just where are the moment-by-moment memories stored?).

reply to post by Aleister


They clearly haven't found every mechanisms responsible in the formation of memories but it's still a start.

I understand your reasoning and the way I see it, it's only a small portion of the messenger molecule which is represented in fluorescent in the video. In reality there must be millions, if not billions, of these memory formation molecule in the brain who interact with each other at any given time, thus making it possible to have complex memory processing simultaneously.

St0rD
reply to post by Aleister

 

They clearly haven't found every mechanisms responsible in the formation of memories but it's still a start.

I understand your reasoning and the way I see it, it's only a small portion of the messenger molecule which is represented in fluorescent in the video. In reality there must be millions, if not billions, of these memory formation molecule in the brain who interact with each other at any given time, thus making it possible to have complex memory processing simultaneously.

Aye, it is a start, and of course there are numerous interactions occurring, which brings up a few thoughts. People with eidetic memory - the ability to very closely relive a specific moment with full perceptives - show that an almost incomprehensible amount of information is stored in our memory every moment. So both the formation and retrieval systems, and the molecules and other biological entities that record and store them from signals and readouts from the central nervous system and our senses (I'm not a biologist, so just layman-speak), are working nonstop and probably at such high rates that maybe no instrument can presently record or keep track of the entire package. Getting to that point may be the holy grail of AI and virtual reality. Yet the brain also has to be hard-wired for moment by moment judgement decision pertaining to our surroundings as we move through and interact with the environment, bringing instinct - which is just another type of ever-present and ever-changing memory - into the mix of the retrieval process. When this entire complexity is mapped and can be seen by either humans or yet undeveloped computers, humans should get to the point portrayed in speculative fiction where a person's (or even a mouse's) memories can be experienced by another, simply by duplication of exact positioning and firing of the molecules involved - even in real time.

So memories are essentially meta-actin proteins structures (carried by mRNA messengers via neurons)?

S&F whether i got the jist of this, or not!

reply to post by Aleister


I like the way you present this and I'd like to add my 2 cents about eidetic memories.

I believe there is a place in this universe where everything that is exists at the same time. We could say it's another dimension, another realm, god, whatever.
A part of the brain could have the capacity to connect itselfs on this dimension, thus allowing the user to have vivid and perfect memories, images, etc, in order to allow him to visualize them perfectly. Even undeniable truths could be accessible. I know this may sound exaggerated a little bit, but when you think about it where does intelligence come from? Love? Intuition? Scientist have said recently there is the possibility of having memories coded in genes. Memory outside the brain?

In my eyes the brain is only the vessel which connects us to the whole energy of the universe. That means science will hardly succeed in explaining all the mysteries of the mind, because it only look at it with materialism view.

reply to post by St0rD


Thanks. Another thing to consider is that genuine psychics can pick up other people's memories, actually look at them. This indicates that access to another person's memories is off-site, as it were, and can be seen by scanning for them.