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Neurons remember taste

29.11.2014

Having taken some filth in our mouth, we quickly remember that next time we can’t eat it - the brain instantly forms a connection between the appearance and smell of bad food and the unambiguous reaction of the stomach. At the very first moment, many neurons respond to food irritation in the brain, but not everyone retains memory. Only a handful of cells store information about unpleasant taste and smell. The question is, how do these cells differ from the rest?

The answer was given by researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles (USA). As often happens, it turned out to be a certain protein called CREB. Those neurons in which its level was elevated remembered the bad taste. CREB stands for cyclic-AMP-response-element-binding protein and it works as a transcription factor: in response to the appearance of the regulatory molecule of cyclic AMP (cyclic-AMP), it binds to certain areas in DNA, enhancing or weakening transcription on them - the synthesis of messenger RNA. A few years ago, Alcino Silva and his colleagues showed that CREB is responsible for the localization of emotional memory in the amygdala—localization in the sense of individual neurons.

At the same time, the researchers suggested that this protein serves as a universal tool that determines which neurons will remember the stimulus and which will not. To test their hypothesis, they conducted a series of experiments with mice that had to try the nausea-inducing solution. The unpleasant taste activated the insular cortex of the brain, but even here a small part of the cells were allocated for information storage, which, as the authors of the work in Current Biology write, contained a lot of the CREB protein. The amygdala and the insular cortex are quite different from each other, but the molecular mechanism that selects cells for memory is similar. So there is every reason to believe that CREB works wherever you need to form a neural memory cell.

Mouse brain cells were modified to synthesize modified CREB coupled to green fluorescent protein. In addition, another gene was introduced into the neurons, which made them sensitive to a substance that turned off neuronal activity. Then the mice were given a taste of salt water, which was also mixed with lithium chloride, which causes nausea. Usually, mice like the taste of salt, but in this version they remembered that salt water would make them feel bad. Three days later, the animals were again offered to taste bad water. Normal mice avoided drinking it, but those in which CREB neurons were turned off forgot the negative experience and drank the nauseating solution again.

Further experiments showed that CREB increased the synthesis of another protein called Arc, whose functions are closely related to the cytoskeleton. It is known about Arc that it is the greater in those neurons that are most excited in response to a stimulus. The role of the cytoskeleton in the formation of memory has been studied for a long time: memorization requires strong nerve chains, that is, strong interneuronal contacts - synapses, and the strength of certain elements of the cellular architecture depends on protein skeletal supports in the cytoplasm.

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