Amazing stuff!
"... Researchers ... recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding the neural processes that contribute to memory linking in the mouse brain. Their findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggest that dendritic plasticity, the adaptation of dendrites (i.e., branch-like extensions of neurons) over time, plays a key role in the linking of memories. ...
As part of their recent study, the researchers employed three different but complementary imaging techniques. Using these techniques, they visualized three distinct subcellular compartments in living mice, namely the soma, dendrites and spines from neurons.
"We showed that when mice form two memories close in time, we can see that many of the same somas, dendritic branches, and spines are involved in forming these two memories," ..."
From the abstract:
"Events occurring close in time are often linked in memory, and recent studies suggest that such memories are encoded by overlapping neuronal ensembles. However, the role of dendritic plasticity mechanisms in linking memories is unknown.
Here we show that memory linking is dependent not only on neuronal ensemble overlap in the mouse retrosplenial cortex, but also on branch-specific dendritic allocation mechanisms. The same dendritic segments are preferentially activated by two linked (but not independent) contextual memories, and spine clusters added after each of two linked (but not independent) contextual memories are allocated to the same dendritic segments.
Importantly, we show that the reactivation of dendrites activated during the first context exploration is sufficient to link two contextual memories. Our results demonstrate a critical role for localized dendritic plasticity in memory integration and reveal rules governing how linked and independent memories are allocated to dendritic compartments."
Compartmentalized dendritic plasticity in the mouse retrosplenial cortex links contextual memories formed close in time (open access)
Fig. 2: Overlap in RSC neuronal ensembles is sufficient to link contextual memories.
Fig. 7: Dendritic mechanisms are necessary for linking
memories acquired close in time in a spiking network model.
longitudinal imaging showing clustering of new spines
following linked memory formation.
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