Making and Unmaking Memories.

• Autores: Charles Choi
• Localización: Scientific American, ISSN 0036-8733, Vol. 290, Nº. 3, 2004, págs. 32-32
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The article discusses experiments to measure the impact of the protein CPEB on the voluntary suppression of long-term memories. CPEB, whose normal job involves creating other proteins at synapses during memory formation, has an alternative conformation to reshape other proteins. In an experiment, volunteers first memorized pairs of unrelated nouns, such as "ordeal/roach." Then, when looking at the first word of each pair, they were told not to recall its partner. As detailed in the January 9 Science, when suppression successfully impaired the recall of the second word, the prefrontal cortex was more active, following a pattern similar to one seen when that brain region stops physical actions.