Memory Engram Cells Have Come of Age
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Tone5Tonegawa et al, Final.pdf
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4.43 MB
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Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Tonegawa, Susumu
Liu, Xu
Ramirez Moreno, Steve
Redondo, Roger L.
Date Issued
September 2015
Journal
Neuron
Publisher
Elsevier/Cell Press
Citation
Tonegawa, Susumu et al. “Memory Engram Cells Have Come of Age.” Neuron 87.5 (2015): 918–931.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
The idea that memory is stored in the brain as physical alterations goes back at least as far as Plato, but further conceptualization of this idea had to wait until the 20th century when two guiding theories were presented: the “engram theory” of Richard Semon and Donald Hebb’s “synaptic plasticity theory.” While a large number of studies have been conducted since, each supporting some aspect of each of these theories, until recently integrative evidence for the existence of engram cells and circuits as defined by the theories was lacking. In the past few years, the combination of transgenics, optogenetics, and other technologies has allowed neuroscientists to begin identifying memory engram cells by detecting specific populations of cells activated during specific learning epochs and by engineering them not only to evoke recall of the original memory, but also to alter the content of the memory.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2015.08.002
