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 Research & Giving News Article  Into How Our Brains Remember Researchers at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, led by NARSAD Young Investigator Peter Penzes, Ph.D., have discovered in studies of laboratory mice that kalirin, a brain protein, is critical for helping laboratory rats learn and remember what they learn. Previous studies by other researchers found that kalirin levels are reduced in brains of people with diseases like Alzheimer's and schizophrenia. Thus, the discovery of kalirin's role in learning offers new insight into the pathophysiology of these disorders. “Identifying the key role of this protein in learning and memory makes it a potential new target for future drug therapies that might treat or delay the progression of these diseases,” said Dr. Penzes, an assistant professor of physiology at the Feinberg School and lead author of a paper on kalirin that appeared Nov. 21 in the journal Neuron. Dr. Penzes, who has been awarded NARSAD Young Investigator grants in 2003 and 2007, studies plasticity, a process by which junctions between nerve cells called synapses undergo structural modifications that contribute to learning, memory and cognition. Defective synaptic connections between neurons in the brain’s cerebral cortex and hippocampus are thought to contribute to schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism and mental retardation. When something new was learned by the rats under observation in Dr. Penzes’ experiments, kalirin was observed to contribute to the development of tiny features on branch-like dendrites that project from nerve cells. These minuscule mushroom-shaped projections, called dendritic spines, grew bigger and stronger in the experiments as a lesson was reinforced through repetition. Synaptic spines are the sites in the brain where neurons talk to each other. “If these sites are bigger, the communication is better,” Dr. Penzes said. “A synapse is like a volume dial between two cells. If you turn up the volume, communication is better. Kalirin makes the synaptic spines grow.” Kalirin's role in learning and memory may help explain why continued intellectual activity and learning sometimes delay cognitive decline as people grow older. “It's important to keep learning so your synapses stay healthy,” Dr. Penzes said. This article was adapted by NARSAD with permission from Northwestern University. |
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