Study suggests: making new memories can damage your brain cells

Recent research has revealed that the process of making memories or remembering something can cause inflammation in the brain and DNA damage in nerve cells as the process involves integrating the memories in neurons. The research has been published in the journal Nature. The process of memory formation requires the creation and strengthening of connections between neurons which helps in storing and retrieving the information later.

Some tests were conducted on mice by the researchers which showed that memory formation takes place inside the hippocampus, part of the brain considered as the storage room for our memories.

“Inflammation of brain neurons is usually considered to be a bad thing since it can lead to neurological problems such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. But our findings suggest that inflammation in certain neurons in the brain’s hippocampal region is essential for making long-lasting memories,” neuroscientist Jelena Radulovic from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York communicated to Science Alert.

The mice were given mild electric shocks to arouse their memory. A careful analysis of hippocampus neurons showed the gene’s activation in receptor pathways crucial for inflammatory signalling. They also found that breaks in DNA took longer to structure and locked themselves to safeguard against outside forces.

“This is noteworthy because we’re constantly flooded by information, and the neurons that encode memories need to preserve the information they’ve already acquired and not be distracted by new inputs,” said Jelena Radulovic.

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