Scientists Find Protein That Indicates Whether Emotional Memories Can be Changed or Forgotten
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Scientists Find Protein That Indicates Whether Emotional Memories Can Be Changed or Forgotten:
Researchers have discovered that a particular protein can be used as a brain marker to indicate whether emotional memories can be changed or forgotten. This is a study in animals, but the researchers hope that the findings will eventually allow people suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to return to leading a more balanced life. This work is presented at the ECNP Conference in Lisbon.
Scientists know that long-term memories can broadly be divided into two types: fact-based memory, where we can recall such things as names, places, events, etc., and a sort of instinctive memory where we remember such things as emotions and skills. Scientists have come to believe that these emotional memories can be modified, so perhaps allowing the trauma underlying PTSD to be treated. In 2004 some ground-breaking work by scientists in New York[1] showed that if animals were treated with the beta-blocker propranolol, this allowed them to forget a learned trauma. However, the results have sometimes been difficult to reproduce, leading to doubts about whether the memories were modifiable at all.
Now scientists at Cambridge University have shown that the presence of a particular protein - the "shank" protein, which acts as a scaffold for the receptors that determine the strength of connections between neurons - determines whether the memories can be modified in animals treated with propranolol. If this protein is degraded, then memories become modifiable.[2] However, if this protein is found to be present, then this shows that the memories were not degradable, so explaining why propranolol does not always produce amnesia.
Journal Reference:
Synaptic Protein Degradation Underlies Destabilization of Retrieved Fear Memory, Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1150541)
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