Memories are made of this molecule - being-human - 15 January 2007 - New Scientist

Memories are made of this molecule - being-human - 15 January 2007 - New Scientist: "How are memories formed? The question has perplexed scientists for years, but now it seems we're a step closer to solving it.

The leading candidate is a process called long-term potentiation (LTP), in which the connections between individual brain cells get stronger the more often they are used, such as during learning. But while LTP has often been observed in slices of brain in the lab, it has been difficult to record in a living brain as learning was taking place.

Now Liliana Minichiello and her colleagues at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Monterotondo, Italy, and the Pablo de Olavide University in Seville, Spain, appear to have done just that by isolating a molecule that initiates a signalling pathway for LTP in the brain of a living mouse. The finding builds on a technique they developed last year to record LTP in a mouse hippocampus - a brain region involved in learning - while the animal was being trained to blink in response to a tone."