Need a bigger hard drive

Joanie and I were sitting around Saturday morning. I was working on my second cup while Joan was thumbing through the Spring Eddie Bauer catalog. We had the radio turned to the local jazz station. And on comes a familiar tune. What I remember are the lyrics, only the first two lines really. I'm an old cowhand from the Rio Grande.

Now I haven't heard this song for decades, maybe half a century. And yet there it is in my memory. My mind can work throught the jazzy ornamentation of the tune and down at the bottom is that old cowhand from the Rio Grande. 

Memory is remarkable. But then why can't I as easily embrace, say, the Lumineers? Or some more recent music?

This may explain it. The hard drive is full.

Mice whose brains were genetically modified to resemble those of adult humans showed no decrease in the ability to make the strong synaptic connections that enable learning — a surprise to neuroscientists at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University, whose findings appear in the journal Scientific Reports.

Yet as the modified mice entered adulthood, they were less capable of weakening connections that already existed, and that made it hard for them to form robust new long-term memories. Think of it as writing on a blank piece of white paper versus a newspaper page, said the lead author, Joe Z. Tsien. “The difference is not how dark the pen is,” he said, “but that the newspaper already has writing on it.”

The researchers focused on two proteins — NR2A and NR2B — long known to play a role in the forging of new connections in the brain. Before puberty, the brain produces more NR2B than NR2A; in adulthood, the ratio reverses.

By prodding mice to produce more NR2A than NR2B, effectively mimicking the postpubescent brain, scientists expected the subjects to have trouble forming strong connections. Instead, the mice showed no trouble creating new short-term memories, but brain scans showed that they struggled to weaken the connections that had formed older long-term memories.

“What our study suggests,” Dr. Tsien said, “is that it’s not just the strengthening of connections, but the weakening of the other sets of connections that creates a holistic pattern of synaptic connectivity that is important for long-term memory formation.”

This suggests that until "I'm An Old Cowhand" and stuff like "They're Coming To Take Me Away" by Napoleon the XIII get cleaned out of the brain I'll have trouble moving in the new stuff.

Plus, I'll probably wander around with the "Old Cowhand" earworm for the next week.

Comments

[Sis]

..."and I learned to ride, 'fore I learned to stand.." And now it's MY ear worm.

[cheap printed bridesmaid dresses]

Great post. Thanks for the helpful cheat sheets. Now maybe I’ll get my head wrapped around this stuff. Probably not, but it’s a goal. Gotta have them goals. samsung1080phdtv.net" samsung1080phdtv.net