What is the purpose of forgetting?
February 23rd 2010 21:59
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From: The New York Times
Just why the brain erases certain memories has long been a topic of interest to scientists.
Now, new research suggests that short-term memory is erased by the brain on purpose, so that new, more relevant memories can be recorded.
At least in fruit flies.
Researchers from China and the United States have found that flies have a protein called Rac that does the job of eroding a memory when needed. The researchers experimented with Rac levels in fruit flies and subjected the flies to two circumstances: a foul smelling odor and a foul smelling odor that also came with an electric shock.
Under normal circumstances, after being exposed to both situations, flies picked the lesser of the two evils — the foul odor without the shock.
The scientists then changed the shock to be tied with the first odor instead of the second.
The flies noted this new information, and erased their original memory. The shock, in their minds, was now correctly tied to the first odor. When exposed to both odors, they again correctly picked the odor without the shock.
But when the experiment was repeated after the memory-eroding protein was blocked, there was utter confusion.
The flies had not erased their first memory, and had made a second memory. Unable to pick which odor to fly toward, they zigzagged back and forth.
Humans also have the protein Rac, and Yi Zhong, the paper’s lead author, believes that further study may reveal how human memories are made.
There is also hope that once they are better understood, Rac levels can be controlled to help people with abnormal memory, said Dr. Zhong of Tsinghua University in China and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.
The findings were in last week’s edition of the journal Cell.
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