Weakening synapses to cull memories

Regulation of Excitatory Synapses and Fearful Memories by Stress Hormones

Memories for emotionally arousing and fearful events are generally well retained. From the evolutionary point of view this is a highly adaptive behavioral response aimed to remember relevant information. However, fearful memories can also be inappropriately and vividly (re)expressed, such as in posttraumatic stress disorder. The memory formation of emotionally arousing events is largely modulat...

Cull Cow Finishing Performance

Adding value to cull cow beef

Targeted Memory Reactivation during Sleep Adaptively Promotes the Strengthening or Weakening of Overlapping Memories.

System memory consolidation is conceptualized as an active process whereby newly encoded memory representations are strengthened through selective memory reactivation during sleep. However, our learning experience is highly overlapping in content (i.e., shares common elements), and memories of these events are organized in an intricate network of overlapping associated events. It remains to be ...

Motor skill training induces coordinated strengthening and weakening between neighboring synapses.

Motor skill training promotes the formation of parallel fiber multiple-synapse boutons (MSBs) contacting dendritic spine pairs of Purkinje cells in the rat cerebellum. However, the dendritic origin of such spine pairs is unknown. Here, we used three-dimensional electron microscopy reconstruction of synaptic connectivity to demonstrate that motor skill training selectively induced MSBs contactin...