Scientists uncover the role of dopamine in mediating short-term and long-term memory dynamics

Originally published by Tejasri Gururaj , Medical Xpress, on August 26, 2024

Neural activity gives information about how fruit flies respond to various sensory stimuli, revealing insights into how they process and encode these experiences into short-term and long-term memories. Credit: Cheng Huang. Fly image credit: https://prints.sciencesource.com/featured/6-fruit-fly-drosophila-melanogaster-oliver-meckes-eye-of-science.html.

In a recent study published in Nature, researchers from Stanford University and Yale University have explored the interplay between short-term and long-term memory in animals.

Learning and memory in insects are controlled by a structure known as the mushroom body, analogous to the hippocampus in mammals.

While previous studies have explored this in insects, the researchers wanted to understand how pre-existing, innate responses to stimuli influence learning new associations and how these memories are formed and maintained over time.

Medical Xpress spoke to the study's first author, Cheng Huang, Assistant Professor at Washington University School of Medicine. Speaking of what drove him to pursue this research, he said, "Since childhood, I have been fascinated by how vivid our memories can be and how they can shape an individual's behavior and personality."

The researchers focused on the Drosophila (fruit fly) brain. Using a combination of experimental imaging techniques and computational modeling, the researchers observed neural activity in the fruit flies as they underwent olfactory associative conditioning experiments.

Dopamine and memory

Dopamine release has been linked to rewarding experiences, reinforcing the memory of that experience. Essentially, dopamine acts as a signal that something good has happened, making it easier to remember.

This helps with encoding new memories and reinforcing learned behaviors, playing a role in short-term and long-term memory formation. It also aids in memory storage and retrieval, stabilizing memories over time.

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