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Neuroscience

Secret of synapse specificity

Nature volume 458, pages 296–297 (2009)Cite this article

How does the brain organize all of the information stored in memory? On the basis of a state-of-the-art imaging study of neuronal activity in real time, the answer seems to be, through specificity in space and time.

Memories are encoded by a specific pattern of activity that is unique to the information being processed and stored. Memory formation is almost certainly achieved at the synaptic junctions between neurons through the process of long-term potentiation (LTP), whereby synaptic communication between two simultaneously active neurons becomes stronger1,2. One of the many attractions of LTP for explaining the biological basis of memory formation is that it displays remarkable synapse specificity3,4: only synapses that are activated become strengthened, and neighbouring synapses located only a micrometre or two away on the same neuron remain unaffected5. In an exciting paper on page 299 of this issue, Lee et al.6 study living neurons using advanced fluorescence microscopy to conclusively demonstrate the molecular basis of the synapse specificity of LTP.

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Figure 1: Synapse-specific long-term potentiation (LTP).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scott M. Thompson and Hayley A. Mattison are in the Department of Physiology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21201, USA. sthom003@umaryland.edu,

    Scott M. Thompson & Hayley A. Mattison

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  1. Scott M. Thompson
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  2. Hayley A. Mattison
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Thompson, S., Mattison, H. Secret of synapse specificity. Nature 458, 296–297 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/458296a

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