Recently, scientists have looked at the consequences of long-term memorization of an event on the brain. According to experts, this could lead to some damage.
What if memorizing an event over the long term could have harmful consequences on the brain? This hypothesis was recently put forward by a team of international researchers in a study published in the journal Nature. The process of remembering an event long-term could actually cause a form of inflammation in the brain, scientists say., but also some damage to the DNA of nerve cells. These consequences appear in the hippocampus, a region of the brain, when memories are “fused” and stored in neurons.
Long-term memorization increases the risk of developing certain diseases.
Although this phenomenon often occurs unconsciously, it can still cause long-term damage. “Inflammation of neurons in the brain is generally considered a bad thing, because it can lead to neurological problems such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases“, explains Jelena Radulovic, a neuroscientist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. She adds : “But our results suggest that inflammation of certain neurons in the hippocampal region of the brain is essential for the formation of lasting memories.” To achieve this result, the researchers stimulated episodic memory in mice using brief, mild electric shocks. By analyzing the subjects’ neurons, the scientists observed inflammation of the neurons, indicating that memories are then more protected from outside interference.
Long-term memorization causes inflammation of neurons.
Although this phenomenon has been observed in mice, it is very likely that it also occurs in humans. “It’s interesting because we are constantly inundated with information and the neurons that encode memories must preserve the information they have already acquired and not be distracted by new input“indicates Jelena Radulovic, specifying that this study allows us to question our beliefs about the formation of memories. “It seems likely that during evolution, hippocampal neurons adopted this immune memory mechanism by combining TLR9 [l’activation de la voie du Toll-Like Receptor 9] for detecting the DNA of the immune response with a centrosomal DNA repair function to form memories without going through cell division”concludes the expert.
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