{"id":223600,"date":"2025-10-18T00:06:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T05:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/astrocytes-are-superstars-in-the-game-of-long-term-memory"},"modified":"2025-10-18T00:06:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T05:06:12","slug":"astrocytes-are-superstars-in-the-game-of-long-term-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/astrocytes-are-superstars-in-the-game-of-long-term-memory","title":{"rendered":"Astrocytes are superstars in the game of long-term memory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/astrocytes-are-superstars-in-the-game-of-long-term-memory2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Why are we able to recall only some of our past experiences? A new study led by Jun Nagai at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Japan has an answer. Surprisingly, it turns out that the brain cells responsible for stabilizing memories aren\u2019t neurons. Rather, they are astrocytes, a type of glial cell that is usually thought of as a role player in the game of learning and memory.<\/p>\n<p>Published in <i>Nature<\/i>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-025-09619-2\" target=\"_blank\">the study shows<\/a> how emotionally intense experiences like fear biologically tag small groups of astrocytes for several days so that they can re-engage when a mouse recalls the experience. It is this repeated astrocytic engagement that stabilizes memories.<\/p>\n<p>Astrocytes have traditionally been thought to have a supporting role in the brain, literally. But when it became clear that engrams\u2014the actual <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/memory\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">memory<\/a> traces that exist in neurons\u2014cannot alone account for stabilized, <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/long-term+memories\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">long-term memories<\/a>, Nagai and his team turned to astrocytes for a solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why are we able to recall only some of our past experiences? A new study led by Jun Nagai at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Japan has an answer. Surprisingly, it turns out that the brain cells responsible for stabilizing memories aren\u2019t neurons. Rather, they are astrocytes, a type of glial cell that [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223600","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=223600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}