Scientists discover how memories are cemented.

From BBC News:

US scientists believe they have uncovered one of the mechanisms that enables the brain to form memories.

Synapses - where brain cells connect with each other - have long been known to be the key site of information exchange and storage in the brain.

But researchers say they have now learnt how molecules at the site of the synapse behave to cement a memory.

It is hoped the research, published in Neuron, could aid the development of drugs for diseases like Alzheimer's.

The deteriorating health of the synapses is increasingly thought to be a feature of Alzheimer's, a disease in which short-term memory suffers before long-term recollections are affected.

A strong synapse is needed for cementing a memory, and this process involves making new proteins. But how exactly the body controls this process has not been clear.

Now scientists at the University of California Santa Barbara say their laboratory work on rats shows the production of proteins needed to cement memories can only happen when the RNA - the collection of molecules that take genetic messages from the nucleus to the rest of the cell - is switched on.