Building memories with actin
Monday, July 13, 2009 - 10:14
in Biology & Nature
Memories aren't made of actin filaments. But their assembly is crucial for long-term potentiation (LTP), an increase in synapse sensitivity that researchers think helps to lay down memories. In the 13 July issue of the Journal of Cell Biology, Rex et al. reveal that LTP's actin reorganisation occurs in two stages that are controlled by different pathways, a discovery that helps explain why it is easy to encode new memories but hard to hold onto them...