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Local neuroscientists shed light on long-term memory

New research by a team of neuroscientists at National Tsing Hua University could shed light on how long-term memories are formed in a way that contradicts previous studies.

The team at Tsing Hua's Brain Research Center (BRC) studied the process of memory consolidation in fruit flies, concluding that contrary to the prevailing view in fruit-fly research, long-term memories are probably formed in a separate mechanism from mid-term memories. The team's findings have been published in the this month's issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, a first for Taiwan.

The study, part of a larger project to map the brain of the drosophila, or the common fruit fly, could have an impact in the future of memory research in humans, said Chiang Ann-shyn (江安世), the director of the BRC and one of the authors of the paper.

"Even though the human brain and the fruit fly brain are dramatically different, there are still analogous structures that allow us to gain insight about how memory works in humans from fruit fly research," Chiang said.

The part of the fruit fly brain called the mushroom body is functionally similar to the hippocampus in humans, while the elliptical body is functionally similar to the neocortex in the human brain, the researchers said.

"It was a surprise to us," said another author of the study, Wu Chia-lin (吳嘉霖), who is working toward his doctorate at Tsing Hua.

"Everybody assumed that all the phases of memory consolidation took place in the mushroom body, but when we knocked out receptors in the mushroom body to prevent memory formation there, we found through behavioral testing that the fruit flies still formed long-term memories," Wu said.

Wu said that he hopes the publication of a Taiwanese

study in a top journal such as Nature Neuroscience would encourage young scientists to to do research in Taiwan rather than going abroad, even though resources for research in this country is relatively lacking compared to countries such as the US.

"Most of my peers are thinking of moving abroad eventually," Wu said. "The moon is rounder overseas, as the saying goes."

"However, we have the capacity to do first-class research here in Taiwan," he said.
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