Topic: synaptic activity

Memories of emotionally-salient events are long-lasting, guiding behavior from minutes to years after learning. The prelimbic cortex (PL) is required for fear memory retrieval across time and is densely interconnected with many subcortical and cortical areas involved in recent and remote memory recall, including the temporal association area (TeA). While the behavioral expression of a memory may remain constant over time, the neural activity mediating memory-guided behavior is dynamic. In PL, different neurons underlie recent and remote memory retrieval and remote memory-encoding neurons have

Neurons use a variety of strategies, including local protein synthesis and pre-established protein pools inside dendrites, to maintain the dynamic proteome requirements for appropriate synaptic activity. While certain proteins have local mRNA that allows for on-demand synthesis at the synapse, the vast majority do not. This poses an important question: how can these proteins manage their copy number without boosting the synthesis rate locally? This study looks into the hypothesis that the amount of the protein pool in dendrites corresponds with the presence or lack of dendritic mRNA for local