Posted on 11/13/2024 8:13:37 AM PST by Red Badger
A groundbreaking study has found that cells outside the brain may have memory functions, challenging the long-held belief that memory is exclusive to brain cells. Researchers demonstrated that non-brain cells could learn from spaced repetition, activating a “memory gene” similar to brain cells. Research reveals that kidney and nerve tissue cells can learn and form memories in ways similar to neurons.
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Our brains—and specifically, our brain cells—are commonly known to store memories. However, a team of scientists has discovered that cells from other parts of the body also play a role in memory, opening new pathways for understanding how memory functions and creating potential for enhancing learning and treating memory-related conditions.
“Learning and memory are generally associated with brains and brain cells alone, but our study shows that other cells in the body can learn and form memories, too,” explains New York University’s Nikolay V. Kukushkin, the lead author of the study, which appears in the journal Nature Communications.
The research sought to better understand if non-brain cells help with memory by borrowing from a long-established neurological property—the massed-spaced effect—which shows that we tend to retain information better when studied in spaced intervals rather than in a single, intensive session—better known as cramming for a test.
An NYU researcher administers chemical signals to non-neural cells grown in a culture plate. Credit: Nikolay Kukushkin
In the Nature Communications research, the scientists replicated learning over time by studying two types of non-brain human cells in a laboratory (one from nerve tissue and one from kidney tissue) and exposing them to different patterns of chemical signals—just like brain cells are exposed to patterns of neurotransmitters when we learn new information. In response, the non-brain cells turned on a “memory gene”—the same gene that brain cells turn on when they detect a pattern in the information and restructure their connections in order to form memories.
Tracking Memory Gene Activation
To monitor the memory and learning process, the scientists engineered these non-brain cells to make a glowing protein, which indicated when the memory gene was on and when it was off.
The results showed that these cells could determine when the chemical pulses, which imitated bursts of neurotransmitter in the brain, were repeated rather than simply prolonged—just as neurons in our brain can register when we learn with breaks rather than cramming all the material in one sitting. Specifically, when the pulses were delivered in spaced-out intervals, they turned on the “memory gene” more strongly, and for a longer time, than when the same treatment was delivered all at once.
“This reflects the massed-space effect in action,” says Kukushkin, a clinical associate professor of life science at NYU Liberal Studies and a research fellow at NYU’s Center for Neural Science. “It shows that the ability to learn from spaced repetition isn’t unique to brain cells, but, in fact, might be a fundamental property of all cells.”
Non Neural Cells in a Lab
An NYU researcher administers chemical signals to non-neural cells grown in a culture plate. Credit: Nikolay Kukushkin
The researchers add that the findings not only offer new ways to study memory, but also point to potential health-related gains.
“This discovery opens new doors for understanding how memory works and could lead to better ways to enhance learning and treat memory problems,” observes Kukushkin. “At the same time, it suggests that in the future, we will need to treat our body more like the brain—for example, consider what our pancreas remembers about the pattern of our past meals to maintain healthy levels of blood glucose or consider what a cancer cell remembers about the pattern of chemotherapy.”
Reference:
“The massed-spaced learning effect in non-neural human cells”
by:
N. V. Kukushkin, R. E. Carney, T. Tabassum and T. J. Carew, 7 November 2024, Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-53922-x
The work was jointly supervised by Kukushkin and Thomas Carew, a professor in NYU’s Center for Neural Science. The study’s authors also included Tasnim Tabassum, an NYU researcher, and Robert Carney, an NYU undergraduate researcher at the time of the study.
This research was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (R01-MH120300-01A1).
How much money did we waste to discover “muscle memory” is a thing?
Does this mean that my wife really talks out of her a$$?
Anyone who’s tried having their brain tell their bladder they really don’t have to get up in the night to go pee knows this.
If you think about it, every cell in your body has a complete copy of you. Every cell is connected to every other cell, from your head to your toes. It is not surprising then, that a memory can reside anywhere......................
Memory can be entirely outside our bodies. That’s how reincarnation occurs. https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/our-research/children-who-report-memories-of-previous-lives/
2AM...................every night.........like clockwork.........
That is also a basis for DUNE’s ‘shared memory’, coming from all your ancestors and from other Sisters..................
This makes sense to me as simple organisms like bacteria, which do not have a brain, need to react to their environment and learn behaviors that are beneficial.
LOL
Psalm 139:14
I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
The entire nervous system is an information processsing and information storing system with the brain at the center.
Well, could be a reach here but then if your kidneys are failing then your memory fails as well.
Eg; kidneys are killed with alcoholism.
Gives enhanced meaning to the phrase “thinking with the wrong head”.
“...simple organisms like bacteria, which do not have a brain...”
Democrats?.................
I quit drinking years ago.................
My kidneys have been reading my diary. They got some nerve.
Is my remembrance of my Granny giving me a fresh baked cookie in my lip? I mean, I did burn my lip when one of the chips inside the cookie was still molten.
There are a ton of physical things we all do and remember. I can close my eyes and still see the Hills of Rome, the Swiss Alps, Colorado Springs Garden of the Gods, the Twin Towers WTC in New York from an Amtrak passenger train...
Those visions aren't stored in my eyes.
I wasn’t talking about you 😆
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