Neuroscientists explore differences in mitochondria of memory cells in the brain with new NIH funding
Have you ever seen someone you recognized, but couldn’t recall their name or how you knew them?
As you strain to recollect the details, a pea-sized clump of neurons nestled in your hippocampus is working hard to connect the dots. This brain region, coined CA2, uniquely encodes social memories in mammals. Without it, mice can remember familiar inanimate objects – but not friends or foes they’d met before.
Now, with a five-year, $2-million National Institutes of Health grant, Shannon Farris, assistant professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, is mapping out the diverse bioenergetic and molecular characteristics of CA2 neuronal circuits to learn more about how social memories are formed, stored, and forgotten.