![]() Here, the researchers found that retrieving cLTM requires the matching of multiple sensory information in the environment, such as the surrounding light, the temperature, and tactile information between the training and test contextual environments. However, the lateral horn, which is often thought to be responsible for olfactory related innate behavior, and connects to multiple brain regions, is required for the cLTM retrieval. Surprisingly, the maintenance of this memory does not require the synthesis of new protein, nor does it require the classic fly olfactory learning and memory center, the mushroom body. The researchers found that in fruit flies, such memory can be formed immediately with a single training session, and can last for more than 14 days without obvious decay. A paper published today by Yi Zhong's research group has found a kind of context-dependent long-term memory, termed as cLTM. However, a single-cycle training on the other hand produces relatively unstable memories that are almost completely forgotten within 24 hours. Long-term memory formed by this training requires several hours to consolidate and lasts more than seven days. In Drosophila, the formation of long-term memory requires ten repeated trainings, each with a 15-minute interval. It is common knowledge in the whole field of learning and memory research that the formation of long-term memories requires a memory consolidation process that lasts for several hours and requires the synthesis of new proteins. The research has upended perceptions of long-term memory and inspired scientists to re-understand the nature of memory. For the first time, it has been revealed that the "context effect" relies on a kind of context-dependent memory that does not require protein synthesis, but can be maintained for almost a lifetime, and the neural mechanism of multi-sensory integration of such memory extraction has been revealed. On October 7th, 2019, a research paper entitled, "Long-term memory is formed immediately without the need for protein synthesis-dependent consolidation in Drosophila," was published in Nature Communications by Yi Zhong’s lab. ![]() ![]() Further investigation will clarify whether this result is attributable to a flexible time window for attentional state encoding or a failure to integrate attentional context during visuomotor memory formation.Yi Zhong’s group finds a long-term context-dependent memory without the need for new protein synthesis We observed no difference in recall performance across early versus late learning phase groups. We manipulated whether participants performed the secondary task concurrently in the early or late phase of visuomotor adaptation and whether they performed the secondary task at recall to match the attentional state to the early or late learning phase. In Experiment 2, we examined whether the magnitude of motor errors determines the critical window for integration between attentional context and visuomotor memory since motor errors increased throughout the adaptation stage. This result provides support that the formation of attentional context-dependent memory can occur even when the sensorimotor perturbation is gradually introduced. ![]() We observed that visuomotor adaptation acquired under attentional distraction was relearned better under attentional distraction at recall. In Experiment 1, we combined the gradual visuomotor adaptation task with an attention-demanding secondary task. To address these questions, we employed a gradual visuomotor rotation (from 0º to 45º) of cursor movement relative to hand movement on each trial during adaptation. Two remaining questions are 1) whether a gradually induced external perturbation also facilitates attentional context-dependent memory formation and, if so, 2) whether there is a critical temporal window for encoding the attentional state into visuomotor memory. To date, the reinstatement of attentional context in visuomotor memory retrieval has been established only when a large visuomotor rotation (e.g., 45º) is introduced abruptly, which presumably triggers explicit awareness of the sensorimotor disturbance. We recently demonstrated that the success of motor memory retrieval depends on whether participants consistently performed a secondary task during visuomotor adaptation and later recall, which was independent of available attentional resources (Song and Bédard, 2015).
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