EPFL Brain Mind Institute shows role of lactate in memory
EPFL students, counting on memory
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The number of people with Alzheimers is steadily increasing, prompting fears of living with a crippled memory, or even dying from Alzheimers, which became the sixth leading cause of death in the US in May 2010. Researchers in several countries have set their sights on various aspects of cell life to get to the source of memory and to understand how, biologically, it functions.
Stem cell research is making it possible to grow, in the laboratory, basal forebrain cholinergic neurons (BFCN), a type of nerve cell lost when Alzheimers disease begins to develop, British media reported Monday 7 March. The research could, in the distant future, lead to therapies. It is the latest in a series of efforts to pinpoint key cells that affect the disease.
Astrocytes use lactate to feed neurons
A surprising cell finding is now opening thanks to recent discoveries at the EPFL Brain Mind Institute in Lausanne and Mt Sinai School of Medicine in New York, working together. In a paper published 4 March in the journal Cell, the two show the importance to memory of astrocytes in memorization.
“These cells, which exist in very large quantities in the brain (they are more numerous than the neurons) and which we know are found at the interface between the blood system and the synapses, turn out to be a supplier of energy for the neurons. They feed them with lactate, a ‘cousin’ of glucose in that it originates from the same precursor–glycogen–of which a stock is present in these star-shaped cells. The researchers have been able to prove that this lactate was an indispensable condition for memorization processes to occur.”
The research holds out hope that one day it may be possible to artificially stimulate memory “by acting on the production and transportation of this lactate”. For now, it is leading EPFL researchers under Pierre Magistretti, director of the Brain Mind Institute, in new directions. “The interest for the astrocytes and lactate, which have not been the object of significant study, will certainly increase over the next few years,” says Magistretti.
Ed. note: International Brain Week is marked in Lausanne by a series of lectures open to and aimed at the general public, mostly in French, from nutrition and the brain to understanding synapses: programme.
Olivier Glassey
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – “Our definition of privacy is fast-evolving right now and we don’t control it,” says Olivier Glassey, from the University of Lausanne. But don’t panic.
“I believe privacy is gone for good,” argues Christian Heller, a self-described “futurist” who relishes taking the debate a step further. Heller likes to remind his listeners that privacy was not a common notion in the Middle Ages, when people lived in small, tightly interwoven communities.
The two were part of a presentation on the redefinition of privacy at the Lift 2010 conference in Geneva Wednesday 5 May.
Teenagers understand privacy and they have their own definition, says Glassey, but a dilemma as the Facebook generation grows up and their elders catch up with them, is how to ensure forgetfulness. “One of the main challenges will be the long-term memory of privacy,” he points out.
Christian Heller
People use social networks like Facebook to recreate their lives, to record their biographies, and this role of social networking has not yet been sufficiently studied. “We need to build in social forgiveness.” Criminals but also the rest of us, who routinely commit small sins that we want to forget, and we want others to forget, should be allowed to fade away, but how do we do that digitally?
Heller reminded his audience that we tend to forget: the 20th century was a time when privacy replaced a more openly shared, more public life, and the shift has not always a positive thing: privacy can also mean loneliness and shame.
Ed. note: WRS radio carries an audio interview with Glassey and Anil de Mello
The brain of the world’s likely most famous amnesiac, Henry Molaison, has been under intense scrutiny by millions of people since doctors in California began slicing it 2 December to better understand why the man, who died 2 December 2008, suffered from severe amnesia. Molaison spent much of his life, after surgery to stop epileptic seizures, unable to hold new memories more than 20-30 seconds. The UCSD Brain Observatory completed slicing the brain by the end of last week. Doctors will soon begin to analyze the more than 2,400 slices they obtained in a project designed to help medicine understand how memory works.
Links to other sites: CNN, NPR, University of California at San Diego Brain Observatory
