How novelty boosts memory retention

Researchers identified brain cells responsible for boosting memory retention in mice when they have novel experiences.

Credit: Marina Bram/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Information about your everyday experiences, such as where and when an event occurred, are encoded into your memory through a seahorse-shaped brain region called the hippocampus.

If something novel grabs your attention, you’re more likely to remember things that happened right before or after the event. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this novelty-induced memory boost isn’t known.

Dopamine is one brain chemical that can have a memory-boosting effect. Two brain regions, the locus coeruleus and the ventral tegmental area, have dopamine-releasing neurons that project into the hippocampus.

A team of researchers investigated whether the dopamine cells in either of these brain regions play a role in novelty-induced memory enhancement in mice.

The team investigated which brain region underlies this novelty-induced memory boost. Using a technique called optogenetics, they inserted a light-responsive protein into cells within the locus coeruleus and ventral tegmental area. This enabled them to turn on brain cells in these regions by using a blue light.

The scientists attempted to mimic the novelty-induced effect by turning on cells in the different brain regions 30 minutes after the training period.

When locus coeruleus cells were activated, the mice remembered where the food was buried 24 hours later. Activating ventral tegmental area neurons, however, didn’t improve the mice’s memory.

Neurons in the locus coeruleus release both dopamine and another chemical called norepinephrine. The light-induced memory boost from the locus coeruleus could be prevented by pharmacologically blocking dopamine receptors in the hippocampus, but not norepinephrine receptors.

These findings suggest that the dopamine released from locus coeruleus neurons is responsible for novelty-induced memory enhancement. (NIH)

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