Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id KAA16533 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 14 Mar 2001 10:43:34 GMT Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745CD4@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Toggling nature's auto-erase Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 10:40:21 -0000 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Hi Wade,
Interesting stuff.
There was a programme on TV here in the UK a few nights ago, making
essentially the same broad point in relation to autistic savants (and some
dementia sufferers). The argument went that in some autistics and dementia
sufferers, the regions that engage in filtering sensory information,
favouring certain kinds of inputs (like people's voices and faces, I
suppose), are the ones that are damaged. As a result such people often
display remarkable talents (on the show they showed two young british men,
one who is blind and severely autistic who has perfect pitch, can play any
tune after one hearing, and is a brilliant jazz pianist, the other with an
incredible eye for draughtsmanship who can draw buildings and city-scapes
with incredible detail from memory).
One of the scientists, whose name I forget, has begun experiments where that
region of the brain is temporarily switched off, to see if otherwise normal
people can access such remarkable skills.
From a memetics point of view, this whole area is very interesting. Do
memes work because they are attuned to the range of sensory inputs that our
filtering mechanisms allow into normal consciousness? Is that why when a
colleague of mine kept singing a snippet of 'quando, quando, quando' , and I
then had it banging around my head for days? (If you know it, apologies, as
I bet it'll be going round your head later today.)
Vincent
> ----------
> From: Wade T.Smith
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 3:10 am
> To: Memetics Discussion List
> Subject: Fwd: Toggling nature's auto-erase
>
> Toggling nature's auto-erase
>
> Mice tests show how gene controls a memory feature
>
> By Richard Saltus, Globe Staff, 3/9/2001
>
> http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/068/nation/Toggling_nature_s_auto_eraseP
> .
> shtml
>
> orgetting too much can be bad, but remembering too much can also be a
> handicap.
>
> Evolution equipped the brains of animals with an automatic-erase feature
> that prevents a torrent of trivial events from clogging long-term memory.
>
> Now, scientists have shown they can switch this device off and on in
> mice. When it is disabled, the mice perform feats of superior learning
> and memory. Switched back on, the rodents become pedestrian learners
> again.
>
> Dr. Eric R. Kandel, a Nobel laureate neuroscientist at Columbia
> University, headed a team that's reporting the memory advance in today's
> issue of the journal Cell.
>
> ''I think this is one of a number of steps toward finding targets in the
> brain'' for future drugs to improve or restore memory, Kandel said in an
> interview.
>
> Larry Squire, a memory researcher at the University of California in San
> Diego, agreed but cautioned that tinkering with nature's balance of
> memory and forgetting could be risky.
>
> ''It's been said that a better memory isn't necessarily an optimal
> memory; you can remember too much,'' Squire said in a telephone
> interview. ''But if you have people with failing memories, that's a
> different story.''
>
> Kandel, whose coauthors included Gael Malleret at Columbia and Isabelle
> M. Mansuy of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, said the brain is
> regulated by molecular switches that can make memories easier or harder
> to form. Memories are processed for storage in a part of the brain called
> the hippocampus.
>
> A molecule called calcineurin is the key player in the balance of brain
> chemicals that determines whether a thought vanishes instantly or gets
> encoded as a long-term memory. The more active calcineurin is, the harder
> it is for the hippocampus to store a thought. When calcineurin is less
> active, thoughts become memories more easily.
>
> Kandel's team bred mice with a foreign gene that could be turned on and
> off by giving the rodents a common antibiotic, doxycycline. The gene made
> calcineurin more or less active.
>
> Then they compared the performance of those mice and normal mice on
> standard memory tests. In one set of tests, the mice were shown a novel
> object, and the mice, by their behavior, indicated how long they
> remembered it was new to them.
>
> In another set of tests, mice had to learn and remember how to swim to a
> submerged, hidden platform that allowed them to stand safely in a water
> bath.
>
> When mice were given doxycycline and their calcineurin was turned down by
> the gene switch, they learned faster and remembered longer, said the
> report. For as long as a week after the experiment, the mice that
> received the drug remembered the object was new. But by two weeks, the
> memory had faded.
>
> Then the scientists ended the dosage of doxycycline, which allowed
> calineurin to be more active and memories harder to form. Given the same
> test, the mouse no longer had superior memories.
>
> ''I would call this a real but modest enhancement of memory,'' said
> Kandel. The genetic switching didn't improve extremely long-term memory,
> and it didn't affect so-called working memory, holding two or three
> things in mind while performing a task.
>
> Kandel next wants to test the system on aging mice, to determine whether
> blocking calcineurin will prevent the erosion of memory with age.
>
> This story ran on page 4 of the Boston Globe on 3/9/2001. © Copyright
> 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
>
> ==============================================================This was
> distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
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> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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