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A Science study from Kazumasa Tanaka's lab at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University has put the leading theory of memory storage under real pressure.
Tanaka's team induced a hibernation-like state in mice, erasing more than half of their synaptic connections. The mice retained their memories anyway.
The dominant model holds that memories form when the connections between neurons involved in a learning event grow stronger and physically larger. The trouble is that those connections don't hold their configuration.
Tanaka has described the arrangement of synaptic connections on day one as very, very different from the same arrangement on day four or five.
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