Neuroscience - The molecular biology of memory storage: A dialogue betweengenes and synapses

One of the most remarkable aspects of an animal's behavior is the ability t o modify that behavior by learning, an ability that reaches its highest for m in human beings. For me, learning and memory have proven to be endlessly fascinating mental processes because they address one of the fundamental fe atures of human activity: our ability to acquire new ideas from experience and to retain these ideas over time in memory. Moreover, unlike other menta l processes such as thought, language, and consciousness, learning seemed f rom the outset to be readily accessible to cellular and molecular analysis. I, therefore, have been curious to know: What changes in the brain when we learn? And, once something is learned, how is that information retained in the brain? I have tried to address these questions through a reductionist approach that would allow me to investigate elementary forms of learning an d memory at a cellular molecular level-as specific molecular activities wit hin identified nerve cells.