scholarly journals Persistent transcriptional programs are associated with remote memory in diverse cells of the medial prefrontal cortex

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle B. Chen ◽  
Xian Jiang ◽  
Stephen R. Quake ◽  
Thomas C. Südhof

AbstractIt is thought that memory is stored in ‘engrams’, a subset of neurons that undergo learning-induced alterations. The role of gene-expression during learning and short-term memory has been studied extensively, but little is known about remote memory that can persist for a lifetime. Using long-term contextual fear memory as a paradigm, an activity-dependent transgenic model for engram-specific labeling, and single-cell transcriptomics we probed the gene-expression landscape underlying remote memory consolidation and recall in the medial prefrontal cortex. Remarkably, we find sustained activity-specific transcriptional alterations in diverse populations of neurons that persist even weeks after fear-learning and are distinct from those previously identified in learning. Out of a vast plasticity-coding space, we uncover select membrane-fusion genes that could play important roles in maintaining remote memory traces. Unexpectedly, astrocytes and microglia also acquire new persistent gene signatures upon recall of remote memory, suggesting that they actively contribute to memory circuits. Our discovery of novel distinct gene-expression programs involved in long term memory adds an important dimension of activity-dependent cellular states to existing brain taxonomy atlases and sheds light on the elusive mechanisms of remote memory storage.

1974 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 939-945 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Rywick ◽  
Paul Schave

Based on a dual-process theory of memory, it was hypothesized that the primacy effects often observed in impression-formation studies are due to a reliance on information in long-term, as opposed to short-term, memory storage. Variables which have been shown to affect either long-term or short-term memory were therefore manipulated in two impression-formation experiments. It was found that a delay following stimulus presentation (which reduces short-term memory) had no effect on impressions while inclusion of an irrelevant task during stimulus presentation (which reduces long-term memory) significantly reduced the degree of impression primacy.


Hippocampus ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (12) ◽  
pp. 1482-1492 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Cecilia Martínez ◽  
María Eugenia Villar ◽  
Fabricio Ballarini ◽  
Haydée Viola

Author(s):  
Ishanee Das Sharma

This review aims to clarify and classify memory from psychological and neuroscientific point of view, delving into the molecular mechanisms taking place as well. The main forms of memory are sensory memory, short term memory and long-term memory. We also try to specify the flow of information through various memory models. The concept of synaptic plasticity and long-term potentiation is highlighted, with special focus on the physiological parts of the brain that are involved in memory storage. Overall, this study will help expand our knowledge on the intrinsic details of memory storage and the functioning of our brain.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (22) ◽  
pp. 12113
Author(s):  
Lucie Dixsaut ◽  
Johannes Gräff

It is becoming increasingly apparent that long-term memory formation relies on a distributed network of brain areas. While the hippocampus has been at the center of attention for decades, it is now clear that other regions, in particular the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), are taking an active part as well. Recent evidence suggests that the mPFC—traditionally implicated in the long-term storage of memories—is already critical for the early phases of memory formation such as encoding. In this review, we summarize these findings, relate them to the functional importance of the mPFC connectivity, and discuss the role of the mPFC during memory consolidation with respect to the different theories of memory storage. Owing to its high functional connectivity to other brain areas subserving memory formation and storage, the mPFC emerges as a central hub across the lifetime of a memory, although much still remains to be discovered.


2003 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 709-728 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel S. Ruchkin ◽  
Jordan Grafman ◽  
Katherine Cameron ◽  
Rita S. Berndt

High temporal resolution event-related brain potential and electroencephalographic coherence studies of the neural substrate of short-term storage in working memory indicate that the sustained coactivation of both prefrontal cortex and the posterior cortical systems that participate in the initial perception and comprehension of the retained information are involved in its storage. These studies further show that short-term storage mechanisms involve an increase in neural synchrony between prefrontal cortex and posterior cortex and the enhanced activation of long-term memory representations of material held in short-term memory. This activation begins during the encoding/comprehension phase and evidently is prolonged into the retention phase by attentional drive from prefrontal cortex control systems. A parsimonious interpretation of these findings is that the long-term memory systems associated with the posterior cortical processors provide the necessary representational basis for working memory, with the property of short-term memory decay being primarily due to the posterior system. In this view, there is no reason to posit specialized neural systems whose functions are limited to those of short-term storage buffers. Prefrontal cortex provides the attentional pointer system for maintaining activation in the appropriate posterior processing systems. Short-term memory capacity and phenomena such as displacement of information in short-term memory are determined by limitations on the number of pointers that can be sustained by the prefrontal control systems.


2016 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary C. Potter

AbstractRapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of words or pictured scenes provides evidence for a large-capacity conceptual short-term memory (CSTM) that momentarily provides rich associated material from long-term memory, permitting rapid chunking (Potter 1993; 2009; 2012). In perception of scenes as well as language comprehension, we make use of knowledge that briefly exceeds the supposed limits of working memory.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 710-727
Author(s):  
Beula M. Magimairaj ◽  
Naveen K. Nagaraj ◽  
Alexander V. Sergeev ◽  
Natalie J. Benafield

Objectives School-age children with and without parent-reported listening difficulties (LiD) were compared on auditory processing, language, memory, and attention abilities. The objective was to extend what is known so far in the literature about children with LiD by using multiple measures and selective novel measures across the above areas. Design Twenty-six children who were reported by their parents as having LiD and 26 age-matched typically developing children completed clinical tests of auditory processing and multiple measures of language, attention, and memory. All children had normal-range pure-tone hearing thresholds bilaterally. Group differences were examined. Results In addition to significantly poorer speech-perception-in-noise scores, children with LiD had reduced speed and accuracy of word retrieval from long-term memory, poorer short-term memory, sentence recall, and inferencing ability. Statistically significant group differences were of moderate effect size; however, standard test scores of children with LiD were not clinically poor. No statistically significant group differences were observed in attention, working memory capacity, vocabulary, and nonverbal IQ. Conclusions Mild signal-to-noise ratio loss, as reflected by the group mean of children with LiD, supported the children's functional listening problems. In addition, children's relative weakness in select areas of language performance, short-term memory, and long-term memory lexical retrieval speed and accuracy added to previous research on evidence-based areas that need to be evaluated in children with LiD who almost always have heterogenous profiles. Importantly, the functional difficulties faced by children with LiD in relation to their test results indicated, to some extent, that commonly used assessments may not be adequately capturing the children's listening challenges. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12808607


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