A new study shows that cells in the kidneys and nervous tissue learn and create memories in a similar way to neurons.
According to , it is common knowledge that our brains — and specifically, our brain cells — store memories. But a team of scientists discovered that cells from other parts of the body also play a memory function.
The research opens new avenues for understanding how memory works and creates the potential to improve learning and treat memory-related diseases.
“Learning and memory are usually associated only with the brain and brain cells, but our study shows that other cells in the body can also learn to form memories,” he explains. Nikolay V. Kukushkinfrom New York University, the lead author of the study in the journal Nature Communications.
The research sought to better understand whether non-brain cells help with memory, drawing on a long-established neurological property — the effect of massive spacing — which shows that we tend to retain information better when studied at spaced intervals, rather than in a single, intensive session — better known as studying for a test.
In the new research, scientists replicated learning over time by studying two types of human non-brain cells in a laboratory (one of nervous tissue and another of kidney tissue) and exposing them to different patterns of chemical signals — just as brain cells are exposed to patterns of neurotransmitters when we learn new information.
In response, non-brain cells activated a “memory gene” — the same gene that brain cells activate when they detect a pattern in information and restructure their connections to form memories.
To monitor the memory and learning process, scientists modified these non-brain cells to produce a shiny proteinwhich indicated when the memory gene was on and when it was off.
The results showed that they could determine when chemical impulses, which mimicked bursts of neurotransmitters in the brain, were repeated rather than simply prolonged—just as neurons in our brains can register when we learn in intervals rather than studying the entire material in a just once.
Specifically, when the pulses were administered at spaced intervals, they activated the “memory gene” more strongly and for longer than when the same treatment was administered all at once.
“This reflects the mass-space effect in action,” says Kukushkin, associate clinical professor of life sciences at NYU Liberal Studies and an investigator at NYU’s Center for Neural Science.
“This shows that the ability to learn from spaced repetition is not unique to brain cells, but, in fact, may be a fundamental property of all cells.”
The researchers add that the findings not only offer new ways of studying memorybut also point to potential health-related gains.”
“This discovery opens new doors for understanding how memory works and may lead to better ways to improve learning and treat memory problems,” notes Kukushkin.
“At the same time, it suggests that, in the future, we will have totreat our body more like the brain — for example, considering what our pancreas remembers about the pattern of our previous meals to maintain healthy blood glucose levels, or considering what a cancer cell remembers about the pattern of chemotherapy.”
Teresa Oliveira Campos, ZAP //
