Ion Magie can help maintain long-term memory mechanism

A Japanese team used fruit flies to conduct experiments and found that magnesium ions could hinder the creation of a protein inhibitor found in nerve cells, thereby helping to maintain memory. long-term.

This research group comes from the Tokyo Institute of General Medicine, Tokyo University and Tokyo Pharmaceutical University. The research results were published in the recent issue of Neurons magazine of the United States.

In previous studies, NMDA glutamate receptors in the central nervous system after absorption of glutamate, neurons will absorb calcium ions, leading to the biochemical reaction needed for all school-related activities. episodes and memory.

However, calcium ions are often hindered by magnesium ions so only when neurons are excited, calcium ions can penetrate into these nerve cells.

Although the fruit fly has short-term memory, but in nerve cells that have too many calcium ions penetrated, Creb protein inhibits the gene's activities in increasing neurons - the genes needed to maintain Long-term memory.

Researchers believe that the inhibitory role of magnesium ions can prevent calcium ions from penetrating too much into Creb, anti-protein neurons, and increase memory activity.

This finding offers hope to shed light on the causes of aging memory decline as well as the mechanism of disease such as Alzheimer's disease.