Research Summary
Professor Guosong Liu's laboratory aims to understand the "biophysics of memory"—how neurons in our brain physically form connections, why they choose to make certain connections over others and how those connections—our memories—can be so precisely maintained. Through an advanced system allowing the manipulation of single brain connections, they hope to discover intelligent models for how memory might be improved, and disease alleviated.
The human brain has roughly 10 billion neurons that communicate with one another through synaptic connections. Each neuron is capable of making 5,000-10,000 synapses its targets, leading to 50-100 trillion synaptic connections in the brain. The connections between neurons give rise to functional neural networks that provide the cellular substrate for higher cognitive functions such as learning, memory and, ultimately, consciousness. How these complex connections are established during the early phases of nervous system development and optimized in lifespan remains largely unknown.
Continuing our inquiries into the regulation of the relationships among neurons and among synapses within a single neuron, we are increasing our understanding of the conditions necessary to maximize the efficacy of these relationships, and thus to optimize the performance of neural networks. Recently, we explored the molecular profiles, synaptic function, and network configuration necessary for circuitry plasticity and identified several endogenous factors, which serve as key regulators of synaptic plasticity and memory. One of molecules is Mg. Along the way, we also demonstrated that the memory capacity of synaptic network is controlled not only by the proteins critical for synaptic plasticity, but also by the functional organization of synapses on dendrites. In intact animal, increase in Mg intake is effective to enhance the memory function of young animal, prevent age-associated memory decline in aging animal, and alleviate the cognitive impairment of the transgenic mice with Alzheimer diseases. Human clinical trials based our discovery are undergoing to translate the knowledge from our research to the new therapy for the treatment of neurological disease with decline of memory function.
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