Researchers in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Haifa have identified a molecule that is used in the brain as a detector for sensory input and its meaning

Another piece in the complex puzzle of memory formation * Research findings could lead to a better understanding of schizophrenia, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's

 A new study conducted in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Haifa may lead to a better understanding and treatment of schizophrenia, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The researchers - Dr. Hanoch Kaptzen, a psychiatrist and PhD student in the Department of Neurobiology and Dr. Kobi Rosenblum, head of the Laboratory for the Study of Molecular Mechanisms of Learning and Memory - in collaboration with American researchers from the Medical School of Wisconsin identified in the NMDAR molecule features that allow to explain how a stable and long-term memory is formed - Range for sensory input, for example sound or image. The research will be published in the new prestigious magazine PLOSONE from the publishing house open to the general public PLOS JOURNALS.

"Every moment the brain is bombarded with information that comes through our senses, but most of this information the brain does not attach importance to and therefore we do not remember it. An important question that we researchers face is why - and above all how - the brain separates the main from the secondary and creates stable and long-term memories for a tiny part of the information that reaches it from the outside world through the senses," explained Dr. Rosenblum. "We know that in cases where the information is defined as important, for example - new information, there is an interaction between the information coming from the senses (mediated in the brain by the fast neurotransmitter glutamate) and the meaning of the information (which can be mediated by the slow neurotransmitter dopamine). Through a biochemical and electrical analysis of nerve cells originating from the brain region called the hippocampus and necessary for learning and memory processes, we identified in this study that the NMDAR molecule serves as the platform where the two neurotransmitters meet and integrate," said Dr. Rosenblum who emphasized: "The interaction between the two receptors and the biochemical and electrical meanings for the connections Those we identified in the research together with the existing knowledge about their involvement in diseases such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and attention disorders bring us another step closer to understanding the biological basis of these diseases and to the possibility of better planning existing and future drug treatment."

 Furthermore, the researchers discovered that as soon as the two receptors for the neurotransmitters - the fast and the slow - work together, a molecular chain begins that eventually activates a cellular molecule called ERK, which has the ability to calculate and connect the sensory information and its meaning and thus cause the transformation of short-term neural changes into long-term memories . In other words: as soon as these two receptors cooperate in time, a molecular pathway is created inside the nerve cells that leads to the creation of a stable memory.