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Researchers at Penn State found that blocking an enzyme, histone deacetylase 3 , helps older mice incorporate new information into existing memories, performing as well as younger mice. This discovery could lead to treatments that improve memory updating in the elderly and potentially aid in combating Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.
“It’s important to understand what’s happening at a molecular level during a memory update because, as humans, most of our memories are updates. We’re constantly building on things we already know and modifying existing memories,” said Janine Kwapis, assistant professor of biology and senior author of the paper. “But no one has really looked to see if the mechanisms behind memory formation and memory updating are identical or if they are unique for memory updating.
To test this, they blocked histone deacetylase 3 , an enzyme that regulates gene transcription, the process of copying information from athat will ultimately make a functional protein. HDAC3 has been shown to negatively affect memory formation and gene expression during consolidation but the researchers said its role in memory reconsolidation wasn’t previously studied.
“Mice like novelty so if they have good memory for the training session or the update session, they’ll explore the novel object location more,” Smies said. “But if they have poor memory, they tend to explore the previously learned locations equally as the new location.”
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