My daughters are in Paris after attending a convention on the research team’s work. What better way to add to the fun than take a cooking class!
Here is my reading for today:
“Not only from our daily experience but from learning experiments in animals, we know that the establishment of long-lasting memory requires repeated practice. However, cellular backgrounds underlying this repetition-dependent consolidation of memory remain largely unclear. We reported previously using organotypic slice cultures of rodent hippocampus that the repeated inductions of LTP (long-term potentiation) lead to a slowly developing long-lasting synaptic enhancement accompanied by synaptogenesis distinct from LTP itself, and proposed this phenomenon as a model system suitable for the analysis of the repetition-dependent consolidation of memory. Here we examined the dynamics of individual dendritic spines after repeated LTP-inductions and found the existence of two phases in the spines’ stochastic behavior that eventually lead to the increase in spine density. This spine dynamics occurred preferentially in the dendritic segments having low pre-existing spine density. Our results may provide clues for understanding the cellular bases underlying the repetition-dependent consolidation of memory.”
“The research, conducted by researchers Albert Mannes of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Don Moore of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, revealed that the more confident participants were about their estimates of an uncertain quantity, the less they adjusted their estimates in response to feedback about their accuracy and to the costs of being wrong. “The findings suggest that people are too confident in what they know and underestimate what they don’t know,” says Mannes.”
“Led by Gladstone Senior Investigator Steve Finkbeiner, MD, PhD, this research delved deep into the inner workings of synapses. Synapses are the highly specialized junctions that process and transmit information between neurons. Most of the synapses our brain will ever have are formed during early brain development, but throughout our lifetimes these synapses can be made, broken and strengthened. Synapses that are more active become stronger, a process that is essential for forming new memories. However, this process is also dangerous, as it can overstimulate the neurons and lead to epileptic seizures. It must therefore be kept in check.”
“The study, “We’re not living together: Stayover relationships among college-educated emerging adults,” is in the current issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Jamison recommends future research to determine the effect of stayovers on marriage and divorce rates. Her follow-up research is focused on stayover relationships in unmarried parents. She is a doctoral candidate in the MU College of Human Environmental Sciences.”
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