Image credit: Gordon Johnson (CC0)
The brain stores memories by changing the strength of synapses, the connections between neurons. Synapses that change their strength easily can quickly encode new information. But such synapses are also unstable. They tend to revert back to their original state and so struggle to retain information. By contrast, synapses that are slow to change their strength are slow to learn, but are good at remembering. The difference is a little like that between writing a message in wet sand versus carving it into stone. It is quick and easy to write on sand, but the resulting marks are temporary. Writing on stone is slow and difficult, but the results last far longer.
The brain must strike a balance between how fast synapses can learn and how well they can retain that information. One molecule that helps with this is a synaptic protein called CaMKII. Each CaMKII molecule consists of multiple subunits and exists in either an active or inactive state. Experiments have shown that CaMKII molecules can swap subunits. But how does this affect memory?
Singh and Bhalla used a computer model to simulate subunit exchange between CaMKII molecules. The results revealed that when active CaMKII molecules swap subunits, synapses become better at retaining information. However, when inactive CaMKII molecules swap subunits, synapses do not become better at encoding information. Subunit exchange by CaMKII thus helps synapses stabilize existing memories, rather than form new ones. This makes it easier for the brain to retain stored information despite threats to stability such as the turnover of proteins.
A better knowledge of how the brain balances quick learning and slow forgetting may help us to better understand brain disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease (in which patients struggle to remember), and post-traumatic stress disorder (in which patients struggle to forget). Biological memory networks can also inspire artificial memory systems. Damaging a few components of a computer memory can erase all the stored information. By contrast, the brain loses many neurons every day without suffering the same catastrophic failure. Mimicking such fault tolerance in an artificial system would be highly valuable for storing critical memories.
