The elusive engram: What can infantile amnesia tell us about memory?

揭示“印记”是神经科学面临的最大挑战之一。在阐明持续几个小时或几天的记忆的潜在机制方面取得了实质性进展，但对调节遥远时间段记忆的细胞和分子过程知之甚少。解决这个问题的一个未被充分利用的方法是研究遗忘。幼鼠是一个理想的模型，因为它们通常会在一两天内表现出良好的记忆力，但一周或更长时间后就会忘记。也就是说，它们在维持远程记忆方面表现出一种特殊的损伤。该项目旨在确定婴儿健忘症潜在的分子/细胞过程，并有望对总体记忆过程提供独特的见解。

Revealing the 'engram' is one of the greatest challenges neuroscience has faced. Substantial advances have been made in elucidating the mechanisms underlying memories that last for a few hours or days but much less is known about the cellular and molecular processes that mediate memories across remote periods of time. An underutilised approach to this problem is to study forgetting. The infant rat is an ideal model as they typically display good memory for a day or two but forget after a week or more. That is, they exhibit a specific impairment in the maintenance of remote memories. This project aims to determine the molecular/cellular processes underlying infantile amnesia and is expected to provide unique insights into memory processes in general.