Today I attended a seminar at Boston University on the mechanism of long term memory as examined in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. The seminar describd real advances in the understanding of the chemical mechanism behind the creation of long term memory. It seems that the mechanism is in place normally but inhibited by RNAi. Upon repeated stimulation, the inhibition is released by degradation of a particular protein and changes in the synapse occur that result in long-term memory. So to create a memory, the inhibition of a system is released.
It is amazing how these studies are accomplished. Today’s technology allows the scientist to implant specific gene modifications so that they are only expressed in specific tissues at specific times in development. They can also incorporate certain “reporter molecules” so that through fluorescent microscopy one can visualize gene activity in specific portions of the D. melanogaster brain. A fly can be trained and its brain examined to see which structures are activated due to the training. The power of these techniques bode well for our understanding of the most basic processes.
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