Scientists of the ‘Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT have been successful in creating a mechanism to record the effects of blocking and unblocking the single neural circuit in a living animal for the first time.

Susumu Tonegawa, Professor of Biology and Neurosciences devised this revolutionary mechanism to observe the effects of bypassing one of the major memory-forming circuits in the brain and its impacts on the learning and memory capacities in mice. Details of this research have been published in this week’s online edition of the journal “Science”.

According to the findings, the ‘hippocampal neural pathway’ also known as the ‘tri-synaptic pathway (TSP)’has an important role in the ‘quick- memory’ formation on witnessing new events in everyday life. “Decline of these abilities that accompany neurodegenerative diseases and normal aging in humans, is likely to be due to the malfunctioning of this circuit”, said Susumu Tonegawa.

On the basis of several genetic engineering techniques, Tonegawa’s laboratory invented a method called “Doxycycline-Inhibited Circuit Exocytosis-Knockdown (DICE-K)”. It is an acronym reflecting “Boston Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka”. With the application of ‘DICE-K’, the scientists were able to “induce and reverse a blockade of synaptic transmission in specific neural circuits in the hippocampus”.

Complexities of the brain and its cognitive capabilities along with the behaviors depend upon millions of molecules composing billions of neurons that are interconnected. Working of this extremely complex cellular network can be understood with the help of cognitive applications like memory. It is required to “intervene in the specific neural circuit suspected to be involved”, he said.

‘Hippocampus’ is a seahorse-shaped brain region that facilitates memory capacities and spatial navigation. It suffers severe damages at first In Alzheimer’s disease. It also causes memory problems and disorientation.

The ‘hippocampus’ is made up of multiple regions like CA1, CA3 and the dentate gyrus.
MIT study aimed at determining complex interactions between neural pathways and the hippocampal regions and its impact on learning and memory tasks. The hippocampus has two major, parallel information communication routes. One is the ‘tri-synaptic pathway (TSP)’ and the shorter ‘monosynaptic pathway (MSP)’. The TSP performs data processing from all three hippocampal regions and the MSP skips through most of them.

Scientists were more surprised to observe that mice with their major TSP pathway shut down were able to learn even and to navigate a maze. The shorter MSP pathway proved enough for them to perform this task.

Maze is such a task that is learned slowly with numerous repeated trials only
The same mice were also subjected to different task in changed environment requiring quick learning and memory formation. Scientists observed that the mice with TSP shut down were not able to perform satisfactorily. It made them to believe that the TSP pathway is essential for animals to acquire memories in a new environment quickly. “This kind of learning results in the most sophisticated form of memory that makes animals more intelligent and is known to decline with age,” Tonegawa said.

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