Neurologists suspect the gene can also perform memory extinction in human patients

Sep 23, 2013 11:11 GMT  ·  By

A paper published in this year's September issue of the journal Neuron details the discovery of a gene that causes mice to lose certain memories.

Researchers suspect that, at some point in the future, it might be possible to use this gene to perform memory extinction in human patients. Specifically, the gene could serve to erase old memories that a person no longer wishes to have and replace them with new ones that overwrite past experiences.

Sky News tells us that, all things considered, being able to use this gene to erase a person's memory could constitute a treatment for medical conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

The gene could also serve to delete haunting memories that people would not miss and would feel better not having.

The same source tells us that the gene now argued to be able to perform memory extinction is known to the scientific community as Tet1.

In order to identify it and its role in the formation and preservation of memories, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have carried out a series of experiments on mice.

Thus, they observed the learning behavior of two groups of rodents, i.e. some whose Tet1 gene was active, and some whose Tet1 gene was inhibited.

More precisely, they made the mice enter a certain cage several times. Whenever the rodents stepped inside this cage, they were exposed to a mild electric shock.

Both the mice that carried an active Tet1 gene and the one whose Tet1 gene had been silenced learned to associate the cage with the unpleasant experience of getting shocked.

The only difference was that, after spending some time without having any contact with the cage, the mice in the first category appeared to have forgotten all about the dangers of being inside it. As the researchers explain in their paper, they showed no fear when they were once again made to enter this enclosure.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists suspect this happened because, due to their having an active Tet1 gene, these rodents lost their memory of being hurt.

The researchers are now looking into the possibility of toying with this gene, and boost its activity. They hope that, by doing so, they will be able to trigger more memory loss.

As specialist Li-Huei Tsai puts it, “If there is a way to significantly boost the expression of these genes, then extinction learning is going to be much more active.”