Cellular and Molecular Biology of Learning, Memory & ForgettingWe live in an exceptionally dynamic and noisy environment. Every day, we experience a plethora of sensory inputs; just a small fraction of these will remain as memories, and forgetting is the fate of the vast majority. But why do we forget? We can easily imagine a scenario where the brain allows us to keep perfect representations of the past. Then, why did evolution enable species with neural networks to eliminate most memories? In other words, is there an advantage to memory forgetting?
Our lab is trying to understand how memories are encoded in the brain and how they are forgotten. For this, we use the relatively well-studied and simple Drosophila brain, a biological model that offers tremendous advantages in the study of neuroscience. |
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