Memory Suppressor Genes: Modulating Acquisition, Consolidation, and Forgetting

By Nathaniel C. Noyes, Anna Phan, Ronald L. Davis. 2021

41 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary The brain has a remarkable but underappreciated capacity to limit memory formation and expression. The term memory suppressor gene was coined in 1998 as an attempt to explain emerging reports that some genes appeared to limit memory. At that time, only a handful of memory suppressor genes were known, and they were understood to work by limiting cAMP-dependent consolidation. In the intervening decades, almost 100 memory suppressor genes with diverse functions have been discovered that affect not only consolidation but also acquisition and forgetting. Here we highlight the surprising extent to which biological limits are placed on memory formation through reviewing the literature on memory suppressor genes. In this review, we present memory suppressors within the framework of their actions on different memory operations: acquisition, consolidation, and forgetting. This is followed by a discussion of the reasons why there may be a biological need to limit memory formation.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience, Molecular Biology

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In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

1. Qian Li
2. Liyuan Wang
3. Xuchen Zhang
4. Yi Zhong
5. Wantong Hu
6. Bohan Zhao
7. Jianjian Zhao
8. Jun Zhu

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Qian Li
2. Yi Zhong
3. Liyuan Wang
4. Jun Zhu
5. Mingtian Zhang
6. Xingxing Zhang
7. Hang Su
8. Xuchen Zhang

In Molecular Biology

1. Qian Li
2. Xuchen Zhang
3. Liyuan Wang
4. Jun Zhu
5. Yi Zhong
6. Hang Su

Citations in the corpus

• Incorporating neuro-inspired adaptability for continual learning in artificial intelligence (2023, positive): “There are specialized molecular signals to regulate the speed of memory decay 30,33 , whose activation reduces the persistence of outdated information, while inhibition shows the opposite effect 19,25,28,32 .”
• Genetic dissection of mutual interference between two consecutive learning tasks in Drosophila (2022, background): “83516 2 of 13 Drosophila is a wellstudied and highly tractable genetic model organism for understanding molecular mechanisms underlying a single learning task (Davis, 2005; Noyes et al., 2021; Waddell and Quinn, 2001) as well as related human diseases (Mariano et al.”