Good memory 'in your genes'
2007-07-30 08:47
London - Weddings and other big
events are the stuff of memories. Now researchers have found a
genetic change that makes some people remember them better than
others.
The findings, published on Sunday in the journal Nature
Neuroscience, could help in the treatment of a number of
psychiatric conditions, including post-trauma disorders, the
researchers said.
Scientists have long recognised a link between memory and
strong emotional events and the important evolutionary role it
plays in remembering dangerous or favourable situations, said
Andreas Papassotiropoulos, a researcher who worked on the study.
But the mechanism that triggers or regulates these responses
was unclear, Papassotiropoulos, a psychiatrist at the University
of Basel, said.
"This is the first proof of principle that we are able to
identify genes and variants for emotional memory in humans," he
said.
Researchers around the world have been scouring the human
genome to find genetic links to various diseases and conditions
in the hope of developing new ways to prevent or treat them.
Papassotiropoulos, along with his colleague Dominique de
Quervain at the University of Zurich, said a readily available
database of human genes allowed them to zero in on a gene they
believed was related to emotional memories.
In their study, the researchers collected DNA from 435 Swiss
students and showed them a series of pictures such as a baby
laughing, a car accident or a table. Then they asked them to
remember what they had seen.
Most people remembered the emotional pictures better than
the neutral ones, but there was a wide range in how well some
people recalled the highly charged images, Papassotiropoulos,
said.
"There was a huge spectrum of this memory performance," he
said. "The result was people with the deleted gene remembered
emotional pictures better than people without the deletion."
The team also wanted to see what would happen to people
carrying this genetic change who had very strong negative
emotional memories.
To do this, they interviewed a group of refugees from
Rwanda's bloody civil war and found that survivors with the
genetic change suffered more severe cases of post-traumatic
stress syndrome, Papassotiropoulos said.
This showed that the same genetic mutation that helps people
remember how to avoid a dangerous situation or recall a happy
experience could also worsen bad memories, the researchers said.
"The deletion variant was not related to whether they had
the disease or not but it was related to the amount of traumatic
memories," he said.
The next step, Papassotiropoulos said, is to search through
the whole human genome to find genes related to memory
researchers did not know about before.
The findings also offer hope that one day scientists can
develop drugs targeting a range of psychiatric conditions such
as depression and anxiety where memory plays a key role, he
said.