Posts tagged cognitive flexibility
Articles and news from the latest research reports.
‘Sticky synapses’ can impair new memories by holding on to old ones
A team of UBC neuroscientists has found that synapses that are too strong or ‘sticky’ can actually hinder our capacity to learn new things.
University of British Columbia researchers have discovered that so-called “sticky synapses” in the brain can impair new learning by excessively hard-wiring old memories and inhibiting our ability to adapt to our changing environment.
Memories are formed by strong synaptic connections between nerve cells. Now a team of UBC neuroscientists has found that synapses that are too strong or “sticky” can actually hinder our capacity to learn new things by affecting cognitive flexibility, the ability to modify our behaviours to adjust to circumstances that are similar, but not identical, to previous experiences.
“We tend to think that strong retention of memories is always a good thing,” says Fergil Mills, UBC PhD candidate and the study’s first author. “But our study shows that cognitive flexibility involves actively weakening old memory traces. In certain situations, you have to be able to ‘forget’ to learn.”
The study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that mice with excessive beta-catenin – a protein that is part of the “molecular glue” that holds synapses together – can learn a task just as well as normal mice, but lacked the mental dexterity to adapt if the task was altered.
“Increased levels of beta-catenin have previously been reported in disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and Huntington’s disease, and, intriguingly, patients with these diseases have been shown to have deficits in cognitive flexibility similar to those we observed in this study,” says Shernaz Bamji, an associate professor in UBC’s Dept. of Cellular and Physiological Sciences.
“Now, we see that changes in beta-catenin levels can dramatically affect learning and memory, and may indeed play a role in the cognitive deficits associated with these diseases,” she adds. “This opens up many exciting new avenues for research into these diseases and potential therapeutic approaches.”
BACKGROUND
To test cognitive flexibility in mice, researchers conducted an experiment where the mice were placed in a pool of water and had to learn to find a submerged hidden platform. The mice with excessive beta-catenin could learn to find the platform just as well as normal mice. However, if the platform was moved to a different location in the pool, these mice kept swimming to the platform’s previous location. Even after many days of training, the ‘sticky synapses’ in their brains made them unable to effectively learn to find the new platform.
Study shows cogntive benefit of lifelong bilingualism
Seniors who have spoken two languages since childhood are faster than single-language speakers at switching from one task to another, according to a study published in the January 9 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. Compared to their monolingual peers, lifelong bilinguals also show different patterns of brain activity when making the switch, the study found.
The findings suggest the value of regular stimulating mental activity across the lifetime. As people age, cognitive flexibility — the ability to adapt to unfamiliar or unexpected circumstances — and related “executive” functions decline. Recent studies suggest lifelong bilingualism may reduce this decline — a boost that may stem from the experience of constantly switching between languages. However, how brain activity differs between older bilinguals and monolinguals was previously unclear.
In the current study, Brian T. Gold, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the brain activity of healthy bilingual seniors (ages 60-68) with that of healthy monolingual seniors as they completed a task that tested their cognitive flexibility. The researchers found that both groups performed the task accurately. However, bilingual seniors were faster at completing the task than their monolingual peers despite expending less energy in the frontal cortex — an area known to be involved in task switching.
“This study provides some of the first evidence of an association between a particular cognitively stimulating activity — in this case, speaking multiple languages on a daily basis — and brain function,” said John L. Woodard, PhD, an aging expert from Wayne State University, who was not involved with the study. “The authors provide clear evidence of a different pattern of neural functioning in bilingual versus monolingual individuals.”
The researchers also measured the brain activity of younger bilingual and monolingual adults while they performed the cognitive flexibility task.
Overall, the young adults were faster than the seniors at performing the task. Being bilingual did not affect task performance or brain activity in the young participants. In contrast, older bilinguals performed the task faster than their monolingual peers and expended less energy in the frontal parts of their brain.
“This suggests that bilingual seniors use their brains more efficiently than monolingual seniors,” Gold said. “Together, these results suggest that lifelong bilingualism may exert its strongest benefits on the functioning of frontal brain regions in aging.”
(Image: Harriet Russell)