This image depicts the injection sites and the expression of the viral constructs in the two areas of the brain studied: the Dentate Gyrus of the hippocampus (middle) and the Basolateral Amygdala (bottom corners).
Image courtesy of the researchers
MIT study also identifies the brain circuit that links feelings to memories.
Most memories have some kind of emotion associated with them: Recalling the week you just spent at the beach probably makes you feel happy, while reflecting on being bullied provokes more negative feelings.
A new study from MIT neuroscientists reveals the brain circuit that controls how memories become linked with positive or negative emotions. Furthermore, the researchers found that they could reverse the emotional association of specific memories by manipulating brain cells with optogenetics — a technique that uses light to control neuron activity.
The findings, described in the Aug. 27 issue of Nature, demonstrated that a neuronal circuit connecting the hippocampus and the amygdala plays a critical role in associating emotion with memory. This circuit could offer a target for new drugs to help treat conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, the researchers say.
“In the future, one may be able to develop methods that help people to remember positive memories more strongly than negative ones,” says Susumu Tonegawa, the Picower Professor of Biology and Neuroscience, director of the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, and senior author of the paper.
Shifting memories
Memories are made of many elements, which are stored in different parts of the brain. A memory’s context, including information about the location where the event took place, is stored in cells of the hippocampus, while emotions linked to that memory are found in the amygdala.
Previous research has shown that many aspects of memory, including emotional associations, are malleable. Psychotherapists have taken advantage of this to help patients suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, but the neural circuitry underlying such malleability is not known.
The Latest on: Optogenetics
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The Latest on: Optogenetics
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- Optogenetics News and Researchon January 7, 2021 at 4:00 pm
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Dec 21, 2020 (WiredRelease via Comtex) -- A carefully developed and designed Optogenetics 2020 market research report from MarketResearch.Biz offers a short overview of the geographical scope ...
- Optogenetic method can reveal how gut microbes affect longevityon December 16, 2020 at 4:00 pm
Optogenetics offers a direct way to manipulate gut bacterial metabolism in a temporally, quantitatively and spatially controlled manner and enhance host fitness. Research has shown that gut ...
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