(Credit: Christine Daniloff/MIT)
A new study from MIT reveals a gene that is critical to the process of memory extinction (when older memories are replaced with new experiences).
Enhancing the activity of this gene, known as Tet1, might benefit people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by making it easier to replace fearful memories with more positive associations, says Li-Huei Tsai, director ofMIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.
The Tet1 gene appears to control a small group of other genes necessary for memory extinction. “If there is a way to significantly boost the expression of these genes, then extinction learning is going to be much more active,” says Tsai, the Picower Professor of Neuroscience at MIT and senior author of a paper appearing in the Sept. 18 issue of the journal Neuron.
The paper’s lead authors are Andrii Rudenko, a postdoc at the Picower Institute, and Meelad Dawlaty, a postdoc at the Whitehead Institute.orgetting/,,,/
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