Endogenous inhibition of CaMKII: A Novel molecular mechanism to terminate memory formation

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What mechanisms are needed to make and store memories in the brain? These mechanisms are still not sufficiently well understood, a fact that prevents us from curing learning and memory deficits in diseases such as mental retardation. My laboratory is studying mechanisms that underlie learning and memory in mice. We perform studies with mice, because in humans we cannot perform well-defined experimental manipulations that are needed to establish mechanisms, and mice are the closest animal species to humans for which a very large repertoire of sophisticated manipulations has been established. We and others have shown that an enzyme called CaMKII is required for the making, but not for the storage, of memory. To terminate the memory making the enzyme needs to be switched off. We have proposed that an endogenous inhibitor protein (CaMKIINalpha) performs this function. More studies are required to validate our hypothesis and here we propose to carry out such studies. If our hypothesis were correct, then follow-up studies will examine whether the novel memory mechanism could be impaired in diseases with associated memory deficits.