Researchers from the University of Southern California managed to record the physical changes that occur in the brain when a memory is made. This incredible feat was done by inducing a memory in a larval zebrafish. In order to record the changes that were made after the memory was created, researchers mapped the changes in the animal’s transparent head– which had brain cells that lit up like lights in a city.
The groundbreaking research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, discovered that synapses (the connections between neurons) appear and disappear in some areas after learning. This was way different than the initial assumption that synapses only weaken or strengthen, not disappear completely. The memory induced caused the synapses in one part of the zebrafish’s brain to be destroyed and caused completely new ones to form in a different region.
Image credit: Don Arnold, University of Southern California