Two postdoctoral researchers from the MCN lab have each been awarded an NWO-XS grant to investigate how synapses on engram neurons (the specific brain cells that store a memory) change to stabilize or modify memories.
The M2 project is a collaboration with the lab of Dr. Krugers at the UvA. Together, they will investigate how stress hormone levels affect the synaptic and molecular properties of engram neurons, and thereby the specificity of a memory.
A study performed by PhD student Panthea Nemat of the Molecular Engrams team led by Dr. Priyanka Rao-Ruiz was recently published in a special issue on “Deciphering the memory engram” in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory in which they describe “Structural synaptic signatures of contextual memory retrieval-reactivated hippocampal engram cells”.
A core problem in several dementias is the inability to form new memories and gradual loss of old memories. Funded by a ZonMW open competition grant, the teams of Wiep Scheper (Amsterdam UMC Human Genetics/FGA), Priyanka Rao-Ruiz (VU MCN) and Michel van den Oever (VU MCN) will collaborate to obtain mechanistic insight into memory formation and persistence and how this is disturbed in dementia.
Michel van den Oever and Esther Visser were involved in a study on compulsive alcohol use led by Markus Heilig and Esi Domi at the Linköping University in Sweden. Using the viral-TRAP technique developed by the CNCR Memory Circuits team, they identified a small population of PKC-delta-expressing neurons in the central amygdala that drives footshock-punished alcohol intake. Their findings are published in Science Advances.
A collaborative study by members of the Memory Circuits team together with the lab of Harm Krugers and Sylvie Lesuis (UvA) reveals that elevated levels of the stress hormone corticosterone induce an increase in the size of a hippocampal fear engram and this change underlies generalized expression of fear in a neutral environment. Their findings were published in Biological Psychiatry.
Memory Circuits Team (Michel van den Oever) and Alzheimer Team (Ronald van Kesteren) join forces to test how hyperactive interneurons affect the formation and reactivation of memory engrams. They receive a 300 k€ grant from Alzheimer Nederland to investigate this.
PhD student Esther Visser and colleagues in the team of Michel van den Oever (MCN) investigated how alcohol memories are stored in the brain and how this contributes to relapse after prolonged abstinence. Their findings were published in Science Advances.
A study performed by PhD students Mariana Matos and Esther Visser in the team of Michel van den Oever reveals that expression of a remote fear memory depends on a small ensemble of neurons in the medial prefrontal that functions as an enduring physical memory trace, or engram.
A team of researchers from the CNCR (led by Priyanka Rao-Ruiz and Michel van den Oever, MCN lab) and the Erasmus MC (led by Steven Kushner, Dept. of Psychiatry) used a sensitive and unbiased RNA sequencing approach to identify gene expression signatures critical to the storage of long-term memories by sparse ensembles of hippocampal neurons. This collaborative effort was published in Nature Communications.
Mariana Matos received a poster prize at the Dutch Neuroscience Meeting (DNM).
Erasing alcohol memories to prevent relapse
NWO awarded Michel van den Oever, team leader of the ‘Memory Circuits’ group at the CNCR, with a Vidi grant of 800.000 euro.
