Feed me Seymour! —

Starved brains kill memory-making to survive

Forming long-term memories are too costly when resources are at a premium.

"Thanks for the memories, but I'd prefer a bite to eat."

As the organ responsible for maintaining equilibrium in the body and the most energy-demanding of all the organs, the brain takes a lot of the body's energy allocation. So when food is in short supply, the brain is the organ that is fed first. But what happens when there isn’t enough food to fulfill the high-energy needs of the brain and survival is threatened?



In order to test the idea that the neurons responsible for long-term memory are disabled during starvation, the researchers trained starved flies to associate certain odors with jolts of electricity. They combined this training with a manipulation that activated the two neurons responsible for long-term memory formation. When these neurons were activated in starving flies, their lives were shortened by about 30 percent, suggesting the activity pushed these neurons past their energetic limits.

Although the researchers used fruit flies in their study, many of the features at play in the fly are also involved in the regulation of long-term memory in mammals.

Science, 2013. DOI: 10.1126/science.1226018 (About DOIs).

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