Genetic approaches to memory storage

The ability to remember is perhaps the most significant and distinctive fea ture of our mental life. We are who we are largely because of what we have learned and what we remember. In turn, impairments in learning and memory c an lead to disorders that range from the moderately inconvenient benign sen escent forgetfulness associated with normal aging to the devastating memory losses associated with Alzheimer disease. Of the various, higher-cognitive abilities that human beings possess, such as reasoning and language, memor y is the only one that can be studied effectively in simple experimental or ganisms that are accessible to genetic manipulation, such as snails, flies and mice. In these organisms, the effectiveness of genetic approaches in th e study of memory has improved significantly in the past five years. Below we review these advances.