Key Points
Bengaluru: DNA damage in the brain and its subsequent repair helps cement long-term memories, a new American study conducted on adult mice has found...
The peer-reviewed study, conducted by scientists from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and published in the journal Nature on 27 March, shows that when long-term memory forms, some neurons in the brain experience such strong electric pulses that their DNAs snap and break...
This triggers an immune system response, which causes inflammation and eventually helps repair the damage to cement long-term memory, the study shows.. This is the first time DNA damage has been associated with long-term memory..
During the study, researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine were able to identify a particular protein called TLR9, which they claimed was responsible for triggering the immune response to DNA fragments..
The study has thrown up other questions too, much of them connected to the details of how the DNA breaks occur and whether this process occurs beyond the hippocampus in other parts of the brain as well, researchers said.. (Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)..
