Thursday, November 20, 2014

Scientists Prevent Memory Problems Caused by Sleep Deprivation

The hippocampus of a mouse glows green after the neurons are excited by cAMP trigger receptors.
     On November 18, 2014, scientists from the University of Pennsylvania found that a particular set of cells that are located in the hippocampus part of the brain may be responsible for memory issues after an extended amount of sleep loss.  Being that sleep is the most critical period of memory consolidation it has been pojected that lack of sleep may be linked to an extended amount of memory loss due to lack of sleep and memory consolidation.  Robbert Havekes is the lead author of this study conducted in the associated lab of Ted Abel, the study's senior author and Brush Family Professor of Biology in Penn;s School of Arts and Sciences.  Ultimately, Abel's lab published a study in Nature identifying the pathways of AMP and cAMP play a key role in sleep-loss associated with memory issues.  The reason why excitatory neurons were singled out was because of the importance these pathways have in transmitting signals in the brain, as well as their function rely on cAMP signaling.

     To conduct this experiment, mice were used as the test animal and were injected with a non-pathogenic virus that harbored the gene encoding receptor for the protein octopamine.  Octopamine triggers the cAMP pathway in fruit flies but is not naturally found in the brains of mice. Furthermore, after the hippocampus in mice were injected with the non-pathogenic virus, the team confirmed that the only excitatory hippocampal neurons expressed the receptor and that they could selectively increase cAMP levels in the cells that were injected with the octopamine.  Therefore, Havekes concluded that these data display that memory loss due to sleep deprivation is dependent on misregulated cAMP signaling in the excited neurons of the hippocampus.

     I found this article to be quite enticing because I typically do not obtain much sleep each night due to the urge to get extended amount of work done.  Additionally, those who attend Medical School or graduate programs typically do not obtain much sleep from the countless hours spent studying or doing homework, thus does this mean down the line that the individuals who decided to further their education result in a significant chance of lossing their memory?  A very scary thought!

Main article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141118182458.htm

1 comment:

  1. This is quite an interesting topic because not much is known about sleep or why some organisms require it in order to function properly. This could be the stepping stone to find why exactly us as humans need sleep. Once that is understood maybe those reasons could be enhance through the power of sleep. For example, those with memory loss issues may benefit from certain sleep treatments or treatments which would mimic what the body would normally due during sleep for memory.

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