New Findings on the Formation of Long-Term Memory

    The article “Making Memories Last” is one that describes the brain’s ability to contain short and long-term memory. Up to this point, the information relating to this topic was very vague, and this is rather newly discovered. Basically, due to studies based in fruit flies, we have found groups or oligomers of synapse protein that are believed to be significant in the storing of long-term memory. This could very well be useful for research on Alzheimer’s and other memory-related diseases, along with the possible discovery of how to keep spreading oligomers under control and from causing such diseases. Dr. Kausik Si, an associate investigator at the Stomers Institute, back up these claims as well as doing constant research and experimentation to learn more.

     In my opinion, this information is valuable to my family and I considering a few of my grandparents suffer from both minor, and major cases of Alzheimer’s. It’s a disease that affects our entire family, and it’s helpful to have some reassurance scientists are making progress on the issue at hand due to the article I have just read. I’m sure others will find this article useful, due to its relationship to Alzheimer’s.

      Although the language was a little hard to understand, and many terms were not described, I did not have an issue looking up these terms to find out more and further learn about the finds upon the topic of long-term memory formation. I do think they did a decent job of describing some of these biological terms, so that helped me through the reading as well. This article was interesting for the most part due to the relevance to the common disease, Alzheimer’s, which affects many people around the world.

http://www.stowers.org/media/news/jan-27-2012

Making Memories Last | Stowers Institute for Medical Research." Stowers Institute for Medical Research. Stowers Institute, 27 Jan. 2012. Web. 02 Feb. 2012. <http://www.stowers.org/media/news/jan-27-2012>.