Unraveling the impenetrable nature of amnesia: A new beginning

摘要

Research into the neural mechanisms putatively mediating memory consolidation (how memories stabilize over time [Ebbinghaus 1885]), has exploded in the last 30 yr, resulting in one Nobel Prize (Kandel 2001). Subfields, such as long-term potentiaton (LTP), are now industries in and of themselves. The term “long-term potentiation” brings up over 7000 hits on PubMed alone. Across all levels of analyses, there has been impressive insights into the mechanisms stabilizing memories. In the typical memory “consolidation” experiment, animals would receive some manipulation such as an injection of a drug that inhibits one of the putative molecular candidates implicated in plasticity. If animals demonstrated intact short-term memory and impaired long-term memory, then this was taken as an operational demonstration that the behavioral impairment was due to an impairment in the consolidation of the memory (Dudai 2004; McGaugh 2004). In addition, the targeted molecular pathway would be added to the list of mechanisms mediating the consolidation/storage of memory. Because of the tremendous success of this field, it might come as a surprise to some scientists that there is any unanswered issue about the nature of amnesia.