{"id":15808,"date":"2025-07-06T09:05:48","date_gmt":"2025-07-06T09:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=15808"},"modified":"2025-07-06T09:05:48","modified_gmt":"2025-07-06T09:05:48","slug":"how-the-binding-of-two-brain-molecules-creates-memories-that-last-a-lifetime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=15808","title":{"rendered":"How the Binding of Two Brain Molecules Creates Memories That Last a Lifetime"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The original version<\/span> of<\/em> this story<\/em><\/a> appeared in<\/em> Quanta Magazine<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Todd Sacktor<\/a> was about to turn 3, his 4-year-old sister died of leukemia. \u201cAn empty bedroom next to mine. A swing set with two seats instead of one,\u201d he said, recalling the lingering traces of her presence in the house. \u201cThere was this missing person\u2014never spoken of\u2014for which I had only one memory.\u201d That memory, faint but enduring, was set in the downstairs den of their home. A young Sacktor asked his sister to read him a book, and she brushed him off: \u201cGo ask your mother.\u201d Sacktor glumly trudged up the stairs to the kitchen.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s remarkable that, more than 60 years later, Sacktor remembers this fleeting childhood moment at all. The astonishing nature of memory is that every recollection is a physical trace, imprinted into brain tissue by the molecular machinery of neurons. How the essence of a lived moment is encoded and later retrieved remains one of the central unanswered questions in neuroscience.<\/p>\n

Sacktor became a neuroscientist in pursuit of an answer. At the State University of New York Downstate in Brooklyn, he studies the molecules involved in maintaining the neuronal connections underlying memory. The question that has always held his attention was first articulated in 1984<\/a> by the famed biologist Francis Crick: How can memories persist for years, even decades, when the body\u2019s molecules degrade and are replaced in a matter of days, weeks or, at most, months?<\/p>\n

In 2024, working alongside a team that included his longtime collaborator Andr\u00e9 Fenton<\/a>, a neuroscientist at New York University, Sacktor offered a potential explanation in a paper published in Science Advances<\/em>. The researchers discovered that a persistent bond between two proteins<\/a> is associated with the strengthening of synapses, which are the connections between neurons. Synaptic strengthening is thought to be fundamental to memory formation. As these proteins degrade, new ones take their place in a connected molecular swap that maintains the bond\u2019s integrity and, therefore, the memory.<\/p>\n

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