{"id":186548,"date":"2024-04-01T06:26:53","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T11:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/04\/memories-are-made-by-breaking-dna-and-fixing-it"},"modified":"2024-04-01T06:26:53","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T11:26:53","slug":"memories-are-made-by-breaking-dna-and-fixing-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/04\/memories-are-made-by-breaking-dna-and-fixing-it","title":{"rendered":"Memories are made by breaking DNA \u2014 and fixing it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/memories-are-made-by-breaking-dna-and-fixing-it2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When a long-term memory forms, some brain cells experience a rush of electrical activity so strong that it snaps their DNA. Then, an inflammatory response kicks in, repairing this damage and helping to cement the memory, a study in mice shows. The findings, published on 27 March in <i>Nature<\/i><sup>1<\/sup>, are \u201cextremely exciting\u201d, says Li-Huei Tsai, a neurobiologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who was not involved in the work. They contribute to the picture that forming memories is a \u201crisky business\u201d, she says. Normally, breaks in both strands of the double helix DNA molecule are associated with diseases including cancer. But in this case, the DNA damage-and-repair cycle offers one explanation for how memories might form and last.<\/p>\n<p>It also suggests a tantalizing possibility: this cycle might be faulty in people with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer\u2019s, causing a build-up of errors in a neuron\u2019s DNA, says study co-author Jelena Radulovic, a neuroscientist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When a long-term memory forms, some brain cells experience a rush of electrical activity so strong that it snaps their DNA. Then, an inflammatory response kicks in, repairing this damage and helping to cement the memory, a study in mice shows. The findings, published on 27 March in Nature1, are \u201cextremely exciting\u201d, says Li-Huei Tsai, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,43,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-business","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}