Building memories with actin

... Memories aren't made of actin filaments. But their assembly is crucial for long-term potentiation (LTP), an increase in synapse sensitivity that researchers think helps to lay down memories. In the July 13, 2009 issue of the Journal of Cell ...

Neuroscientists discover long-term potentiation in the olfactory bulb

... connections between brain cells, called synapses, could change their strength following brief periods of activity. This process, called long-term potentiation (LTP), is the leading candidate to explain how we store information about specific places, names and events. While laboratories around the world have ...

Mitochondria could be a target for therapeutic strategy for Alzheimer's disease patients

... improved the learning, memory, and synaptic function of an Alzheimer's disease mouse model and alleviated Aβ-mediated reduction of long term potentiation (LTP). Thus, the CypD/Aβ-mediated mitochondrial permeability transition pore directly links to the cellular and synaptic perturbation relevant ...

Astrocytes and synaptic plasticity

... transmission to affect processes such as learning and memory, say Bergami et al. The major cellular events of learning and memory are long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD), both of which affect neurons' ability to communicate with one another. Neurons that have undergone LTP display ...

Paradigm shift in Alzheimers's research: new treatments

... in brain and spinal cord23. At six months of age already a 33% CA1 neuron loss in the hippocampus, together with a drastic reduction of long-term potentiation was observed24. CA1 neuron loss in these mice is likely to contribute to the working memory deficits and complete loss of synaptic plasticity ...

UCI researchers restore memory process in most common form of mental disability

... deficits, Lauterborn said. In their study, the researchers reported how the loss of a functional Fmr1 gene impaired a process called long-term potentiation (LTP) in the hippocampus region of the brain where memories are created and stored. LTP describes a chemical process that literally strengthens a ...

Hearts of male and female rainbow trout are different

... and hypoxic conditions. The researchers measured several indices of contractile performance (resting tension, twitch force, post-rest potentiation and other variables. Frozen samples of ventricle tissue were homogenized and assayed for citrate concentration. Ventricle rings were processed, ...

New Brandeis research sheds light on memory by erasing it

... CaMKII as a memory molecule." The research involved electrically stimulating neuronal synapses to strengthen them, a process known as long-term potentiation (LTP). This process has served as a model system for studying memory. CaMKII has been a leading candidate as a memory molecule because it is ...

Drug treatment improves learning in mice with Down syndrome symptoms, Stanford/Packard study shows

... terms, once a threshold of activating signals has been achieved, a neuron becomes permanently more sensitive to excitation. Although long-term potentiation has been shown to be impaired or absent in the brains of Down syndrome mice, postdoctoral scholar Wade Morishita, PhD, who works in the Stanford ...

A natural chemical found in strawberries boosts memory in healthy mice

... stored in the brain by strengthening connections between neurons. "We wanted to find out whether we could detect any effects of fisetin on long-term potentiation and the formation of memories in animals," Maher recalls. Since the hippocampus plays an important role in establishing new memories, Maher, and ...

Drug triggers body's mechanism to reverse aging effect on memory process

... of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein known to play a key role in memory formation. They also found an increase in long-term potentiation (LTP), the process by which the connection between the brain cells is enhanced and memory is encoded. This enhancement is responsible for long-term ...

New clue to cocaine addicts' quirky behavior

... did disrupt this normal plasticity. They found that the cocaine induced abnormal enhancement of neuronal connections--a phenomenon called long-term potentiation (LTP). The researchers also performed behavioral studies on the cocaine-sensitized rats, to explore the behavioral effects of this disruption. In ...