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Neurobiology

A spine to remember

Nature volume 399, pages 19–20 (1999)Cite this article

How can we remember some information for many years, even after only a short experience of it? On page 66 of this issue, Engert and Bonhoeffer1 present evidence that when nerve cells receive an intense stream of impulses, they may form new structural and, perhaps, functional connections. Such new couplings may be the substrate for the long-term storage of information in the brain.

For about 100 years, neuroscientists have been guided by two proposals. The first, by Tanzi2, states that the nervous substrate for learning and memory could be a “thickening of the nerve fibres”. But Ramón y Cajal3 postulated that this substrate is a strengthening of the connections — or even a building of new connections — between the nerve cells that are most actively engaged in the learning task. Although there is experimental support for these ideas, conclusive evidence has been extraordinarily difficult to find.

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Figure 1: Generation of new dendritic spines in response to long-term potentiation.

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  1. Per Andersen is at the Institute for Basic Medical Research, University of Oslo, PO Box 1104 Blindern, N-0317, Oslo, Norway

    Per Andersen

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Andersen, P. A spine to remember. Nature 399, 19–20 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/19857

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