Andre Antonio Fenton
New York University, NY·Neuroscience
How the brain stores memories is still unknown. The leading idea, the synaptic plasticity and memory (SPM) hypothesis, holds that learning strengthens a subset of synapses, the connections between neurons, on the cells that encode an experience.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
Physiology
- Topics
memory
synaptic plasticity
long-term potentiation
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2028
What they work on
- Test whether erasing aPKC-dependent synaptic strengthening, via genetic manipulation of PKMζ and PKCι/λ targeted to memory-encoding hippocampal neurons, permanently erases a long-term active place avoidance memory.
- Determine whether optogenetic activation of the memory-associated hippocampal neurons, after erasure, still produces conditioned avoidance behavior, which would challenge the synaptic plasticity and memory hypothesis.
- Record the firing of memory-associated hippocampal neurons during optogenetic activation to test whether spatial information from the place memory is still expressed after aPKC-mediated erasure.
More about the research
That lasting change would then store the memory. If this is right, blocking the molecular machinery that keeps those synapses strong should erase the memory permanently. Past tests have been indirect, either because drugs affected many unrelated cells or because the memory studied did not depend on the hippocampus, a brain region key to spatial memory.
Why it matters
The work directly tests the central theory of how long-term memories are stored. Its outcome would either support or force revision of a hypothesis that underlies much of memory neuroscience. Understanding whether memory lives in strengthened synapses could eventually inform research on memory and its disorders.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Vishnu Suppiramaniam
Kennesaw State University, GA·Neuroscience
Investigate the molecular mechanisms behind memory and synaptic plasticity deficits after prenatal cannabinoid exposure, using behavioral tests and hippocampal measurements of long-term potentiation and long-term depression in exposed animals.
Jason D Shepherd
University of Utah, UT·Neuroscience
Test whether LTP increases Arc protein in dendrites and its assembly into virus-like capsids, using live imaging of neurons.
Jun-Hyeong Cho
University of California-Riverside, CA·Neuroscience
Determine how contextual fear memory is encoded through synaptic strengthening in the hippocampus–amygdala pathway, combining engram cell labeling, optogenetics and electrophysiology.
The school
New York University: 72 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 540 research doctorates a year.
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