Article archive / August 1, 2014
Originally published: . Volume 5, No. 12. Source pages: 8.
Tulane’s Dr. Paul Colombo is at the forefront of memory research, an area that he and others hope will uncover ways to prevent or reverse age- associated memory decline.
Colombo will present “Memory Enhancement, CREB, and Interactions Between the Hippocampus and Striatum,” as part of a panel for the Thursday APA symposium, “Interactions Between Memory Systems–– Mechanisms and Implications for Mental Health.” Dr. Colombo leads the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory Laboratory at Tulane and is an Associate Professor in Psychology. He is also program chair for the convention for APA Division 6, Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology.
“The work that I'm presenting,” Dr. Colombo explained to the Times, “is on advances in our understanding of how multiple memory systems interact with each other. Overall,” he said, “there is wide agreement that at least two neural systems mediate different types of memory. The hippocampus is necessary for explicit, autobiographical memory, accessible through conscious awareness, and the dorsal striatum is necessary for motor and cognitive habits.”
There has been evidence that reduced grey matter in the hippocampus is associated with increased risk of some neurological and psychiatric disorders, there has been an increased effort to understand these mechanisms.
“Historically, the memory systems were thought to be largely independent of one another,” said Colombo, “but there is increasing evidence that they may interact competitively, and that our relative use of one system or the other may change under different circumstances.”
Colombo and colleague Dr. Veronique Bohbot of McGill University have reported on such matters as the incidence of schizophrenia spectrum disorders, behaviors such as smoking, and also alcohol use, and how these are related to the use of less effective response strategies in the brain.
Also, the use of the habit system in the brain increases with age, but can also lead to reduced performance. This may be reversed with forms of training, Colombo explained.
“I am studying the neuronal mechanics of these interactions,” said Colombo, “and have reported that use of region-specific memory strategies is associated with local activation of a transcription factor, CREB. I use virus-mediated gene transfer, in an animal model, to alter CREB levels, and have shown that this can enhance memory, which may have therapeutic benefits for preventing or reversing age-associated memory decline.”
With these discoveries there is a keen interest in this area of study, and so last year Colombo and Bohbot co-edited a special volume of the journal Hippocampus titled, "Dynamic interactions between memory systems.” Articles from this special issue are available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.c om/doi/10.1002/hipo.v23.11 /issuetoc
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