I'm not sure how much RAM the human mind has (we now use less than 10%), but I think we have the capability to store more information than all the computers in the world. If a person were to ingest large amounts of this protein he could become a human computer, being able to instantaneously recall every bit of knowledge ever input into his mind. Imagine the advantage you would have over those who do not have access to the protein!

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Wednesday May 16 5:22 PM ET

Mystery of Permanent Memory Revealed

By Will Boggs, MD

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - For the first time, scientists have identified a protein in the brain that is required for turning short-term memories into permanent ones.

Initial learning takes place in one part of the brain, the hippocampus, but these first experiences become permanent memories only after reinforcement in the brain's outermost layer, the cortex, according to Dr. Alcino J. Silva from the University of California at Los Angeles and associates.

Until now, little was known about the processes involved in making that translation.

The authors tested mice that had only half the normal levels of a protein called alpha-CaMKII. The total absence of this protein results in learning and memory problems. The model they used enabled the scientists to separate the short-term learning functions of the hippocampus from the permanent memory functions of the cortex.

Mice with less alpha-CaMKII learned tasks as well as normal mice, the authors report in the May 17th issue of Nature, but--unlike normal mice--they forgot the tasks within a few days. The timing of this memory loss, they say, matches the shift in the memory function from the hippocampus to the cortex.

Using sophisticated measurements of the electrical activity of the brain, the researchers also showed that mice deficient in alpha-CaMKII have disruptions in the type of activity usually associated with the development of memories. Again, these disruptions were present in the cortex, but not in the hippocampus.

``We have uncovered new insights into the function of this protein (it is involved in the formation of permanent memories in the cortex), but our work also speaks to the sites and mechanisms required to establish permanent memories in the brain,'' Silva told Reuters Health. ``This information will be essential to design therapies to memory disorders.''

``Our article reports the first molecular and cellular information into one of memory's most mysterious processes: how we establish the memories that the brain retains, the ones that become our oldest memories,'' Silva concluded. ``These are very specific (and hopefully important) clues into this mysterious and wonderful process.''

SOURCE: Nature 2001;411:309-313,248-249.

-- (we will become @ walking. encyclopedias), May 17, 2001

Answers

How is experience represented and stored within the brain? A fundamental tenet of modern brain theory has been that information is coded in the coordinated activity of neuronal ensembles. Research in the Wilson laboratory focuses on the study of information representation across large populations of neurons in the mammalian nervous system, as well as on the mechanisms that underlie formation and maintenance of distributed memories in freely behaving animals.

To study the basis of these processes, Wilson employs a combination of electrophysiological, pharmacological, behavioral, and computational approaches. Using techniques that allow the simultaneous activity of ensembles of hundreds of single neurons to be examined in freely behaving animals, laboratory personnel are examining how memories of places and events are encoded across networks of cells within the hippocampus - a region of the brain long implicated in the processes underlying learning and memory. This theory was demonstrated in a recent experiment showing that ongoing patterns of neuronal ensemble activity can predict an animal's moment-by-moment position as it moves about in space.

These studies of learning and memory in awake behaving animals have led to the exploration of the nature of sleep and its role in memory. Previous theories have suggested that sleep states may be involved in the process of memory consolidation, in which memories are transferred from short- to longer-term stores and possible reorganized into more efficient forms. Evidence of this was found when ensembles of neurons within the hippocampus, which had been recently activated during subsequent sleep periods, became reactivated during subsequent sleep periods, suggesting the presence of dream-like states. By reconstructing the content of these states, specific memories can be tracked during the course of the consolidation process. Pharmacological and genetic manipulations of these systems allows Wilson's lab to investigate the role of putative mechanisms of learning and memory on neuronal activity in the freely behaving animal. Laboratory work also employs computational and biophysical modeling of the hippocampus and related memory systems as a means of guiding hypothesis formation and interpreting experimental data.

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), May 17, 2001.

The study says it can help people with memory disorders, not that it can augment memory. Now if they could train a rat hundreds of different mazes, that would be closer to what you insinuate.

-- (@ .), May 17, 2001.

Scientists made this exact same discovery a few years ago. . .

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...but then they forgot about it!!! Ha ha ha!!!!

-- (ha@ha.ha), May 17, 2001.