A new study in mice has raise the tantalizing possibility that memory loss after a head injury could be reversible .
Repeated head injury , such as that experienced byprofessional football playersand other sportspeople , is known to be a risk component forneurodegenerative diseasedown the line . accept grueling blows to the head over a sporting career – or during a stint in the armed services , for example – may eventually lead in a condition calledchronic traumatic encephalopathy(CTE ) , which can come with memory loss , confusion , low , and personality change .
But you do n’t need to experience a serious head injury to be at risk of complications . On average , college football players receive 21 head impacts per workweek – 41 for defensive remainder – and scientists are working hard to try and understand what even these relatively balmy impacts could mean for their future tense .
A team of scientist at Georgetown University Medical Center hadpreviously uncoveredan adaptative mechanics in the nous that alters the way synapses maneuver in reception to point trauma . This , in turn , can make it difficult to lay down raw retentivity or recall old ones . Using this knowledge , the team and their collaborators at Trinity College Dublin have found a way to make a group of computer mouse retrieve something they ’d block after a mild head hurt .
“ Most research in this area has been in human brains with chronic traumatic encephalopathy ( CTE ) , which is a degenerative brain disease found in people with a account of repetitive straits impact , ” said senior investigator Dr Mark Burns in astatement . “ By direct contrast , our goal was to understand how the brain change in response to the low - level head impacts that many young football players regularly experience . ”
To that end , they took two groups of mice and exposed them to a place that would provoke fear . Once they had learned the fear reception and committed it to memory , one group of the mice was exposed to multiple , meek head impingement over the course of a hebdomad , mimicking a calendar week in the lifetime of the average college football game histrion . The other mice act as a ascendance , receive no head injuries .
After a week , the mice that had experienced repeated head trauma could no longer recall the fear they ’d see – but these were no ordinary mice . They ’d been genetically modify so that the scientists could visualize the neuron involved in making the new memory board in their brains – the “ memory engram ” .
Even after all those bumps on the head , thememoryengram stay intact , and looked the same as it did in the mouse that had a head hurt - costless week . The only difference was that the injured mice were no longer able to actuate this engram .
“ We are right at associating memories with places , and that ’s because being in a place , or seeing a photo of a place , do a reactivation of our memory engrams , ” explain first generator Dr Daniel P Chapman . “ When the mice see the elbow room where they first learned the retentivity , the control computer mouse are able-bodied to activate theirmemoryengram , but the headspring impact shiner were not . This is what was causing the memory loss . ”
Luckily for the mouse , there ’s a way for scientist to activate the memory trace cells manually , usinglasers . Unluckily for us , the proficiency is too invasive to be used in humans – but , it does demo that reawakening a supposedly lose retentivity is theoretically possible .
“ We are currently study a number of non - invasive technique to attempt to communicate to the mastermind that it is no longer in danger , and to open a window of plasticity that can readjust the nous to its former state , ” said Burns .
While these findings wo n’t lead to a discussion in humanity any clock time soon , they ’re an crucial step forward in our understanding of how head trauma can lead to amnesia even in the short term , and of how it might be possible tofix it .
“ Our research gives us hope that we can project treatments to riposte the heading - wallop brain to its normal precondition and reclaim cognitive use in humans that have poor memory because of repeated head impacts , ” Burns say .
The report is publish inThe Journal of Neuroscience .
