title: Genetic approaches to memory storage.
abstract: The ability to remember is perhaps the most significant and distinctive feature of our mental life. We are who we are largely because of what we have learned and what we remember. In turn, impairments in learning and memory can lead to disorders that range from the moderately inconvenient benign senescent forgetfulness associated with normal aging to the devastating memory losses associated with Alzheimer disease. Of the various, higher-cognitive abilities that human beings possess, such as reasoning and language, memory is the only one that can be studied effectively in simple experimental organisms that are accessible to genetic manipulation, such as snails, flies and mice. In these organisms, the effectiveness of genetic approaches in the study of memory has improved significantly in the past five years. Below we review these advances.
authors.affiliation: University of California, San Diego, Department of Neurosciences, La Jolla, CA 92093-0691, USA. mmayford@ucsd.edu
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mayford
authors.forename: E R
authors.initials: ER
authors.lastname: Kandel
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology; D000818:Animals; D030801:Animals, Genetically Modified; D001048:Aplysia / Q000502:physiology; D001925:Brain Damage, Chronic / Q000523:psychology; D019703:Calcineurin / Q000502:physiology; D002147:Calmodulin / Q000502:physiology; D000242:Cyclic AMP / Q000502:physiology; D017362:Cyclic AMP Response Element-Binding Protein / Q000502:physiology; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000502:physiology; D005544:Forecasting; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000293:injuries / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D017774:Long-Term Potentiation; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000235:genetics; D051379:Mice; D018345:Mice, Knockout; D019076:Transgenes
chemical_list: D002147:Calmodulin; D017362:Cyclic AMP Response Element-Binding Protein; D000242:Cyclic AMP; D019703:Calcineurin