{"id":241077,"date":"2026-07-17T12:09:01","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T17:09:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/dendrites-may-be-key-to-learning-and-memory-study-suggests"},"modified":"2026-07-17T12:09:01","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T17:09:01","slug":"dendrites-may-be-key-to-learning-and-memory-study-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/dendrites-may-be-key-to-learning-and-memory-study-suggests","title":{"rendered":"Dendrites may be key to learning and memory, study suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/dendrites-may-be-key-to-learning-and-memory-study-suggests.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Branchlike structures called dendrites that extend from neurons appear to make their own computations independent of the cell body, helping individual brain cells store memories of the past, respond to the present and anticipate the future, a study led by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers suggests.<\/p>\n<p>The findings, published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.aeh9302\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Science<\/i><\/a>, represent a paradigm shift in current models of how learning and memory take place.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis shifts our entire perspective. Rather than acting as simple switches, neurons behave more like sophisticated processors with internal divisions of labor, dramatically increasing the brain\u2019s computational capacity,\u201d said Attila Losonczy, M.D., Ph.D., professor at the Peter O\u2019Donnell Jr. Brain Institute of Neuroscience and director of the Program in Memory Longevity (PML) at UT Southwestern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Branchlike structures called dendrites that extend from neurons appear to make their own computations independent of the cell body, helping individual brain cells store memories of the past, respond to the present and anticipate the future, a study led by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers suggests. The findings, published in Science, represent a paradigm shift [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1523,269,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-computing","category-life-extension","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241077","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\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}