{"id":302288,"date":"2025-10-14T09:37:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T09:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/302288\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T09:37:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T09:37:12","slug":"scientists-found-that-memory-can-happen-outside-the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/302288\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Found That Memory Can Happen Outside The Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" <\/a>Credit: ZME Science\/Midjourney.<\/p>\n

We tend to think of memory as exclusively the brain\u2019s domain, but new research suggests that this view may be far too narrow. A study from New York University shows that some ordinary human cells outside of the brain can also learn and store information.<\/p>\n

When exposed to signals that mimic the rhythms of learning, these cells behaved much like neurons. Their responses strengthened when stimulation was spaced out over time rather than delivered all at once.<\/p>\n

\u201cLearning and memory are generally associated with brains and brain cells alone, but our study shows that other cells in the body can learn and form memories, too,\u201d said Nikolay V. Kukushkin<\/a>, the lead author of the study. The findings suggest that learning could be a fundamental property of life itself, built into the way all cells process time and information.<\/p>\n

The Body Remembers<\/p>\n

The discovery centers on a principle known as the spacing effect<\/a>, first described in the 19th century by psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. It\u2019s the reason we remember material better when we review it in intervals instead of cramming just before a test. We have observed this effect across animals, from humans to sea slugs. Notably, it has always been tied to neural activity.<\/p>\n

So, Kukushkin and his team decided to test whether the same principle might apply beyond the brain. They used two human cell types: one derived from nerve tissue, and another from kidney cells, which have no role in the nervous system. Both were genetically engineered to produce a glowing signal when a \u201cmemory gene,\u201d controlled by a protein, CREB, switched on. CREB is a molecular switch that helps neurons consolidate long-term memory. It also exists in nearly every cell in the body.<\/p>\n

Next came the experiment.<\/p>\n

The researchers exposed the cells to brief pulses of chemicals that mimic the brain\u2019s learning signals. Each pulse lasted only three minutes, and the pulses were either spaced out or delivered in one long burst.<\/p>\n

When the pulses were spaced apart, the cells lit up more brightly and for much longer. The \u201cmemory gene\u201d stayed active for hours after the training ended, especially when the pulses were ten minutes apart. In contrast, when the same amount of stimulation was delivered all at once (a \u201cmassed\u201d pattern), the glow faded quickly.<\/p>\n

A Property of All Cells?<\/p>\n

\"A <\/a>An NYU researcher administers chemical signals to non-neural cells grown in a culture plate. Credit: Nikolay Kukushkin.<\/p>\n

In one trial, cells given four spaced pulses showed a 2.8-fold stronger activation of a CREB-controlled memory gene after 24 hours compared to those given one continuous signal. What happened is the cells recognized and encoded a pattern in time \u2014 the difference between signals that came in spaced intervals versus signals that came all at once. In other words, the information they stored was the temporal structure of the stimulation, the rhythm or timing of chemical pulses. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis reflects the massed-spaced effect in action,\u201d said Kukushkin. \u201cIt shows that the ability to learn from spaced repetition isn\u2019t unique to brain cells, but might be a basic feature of cellular function.\u201d<\/p>\n

The results of the experiment were the same whether the cells were nerve cells or kidney cells. Even 24 hours later, the cell \u201cremembers\u201d how it was stimulated before, because certain molecular switches remain altered.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that it\u2019s not a property of either type of cell \u2014 it\u2019s just a generic property of all cells,\u201d Kukushkin told IFLScience<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Smarter Than We Think<\/p>\n

If true, this means that memory might not require a brain at all. Instead, it could be a universal biological process \u2014 a way for cells to detect and store temporal patterns in their environment, whether that environment is a neural network or a bloodstream.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the future, we will need to treat our body more like the brain,\u201d Kukushkin said. \u201cFor example, consider what our pancreas remembers about the pattern of our past meals to maintain healthy levels of blood glucose \u2014 or consider what a cancer cell remembers about the pattern of chemotherapy.\u201d<\/p>\n

That concept could reshape medicine. If cells \u201cremember\u201d past exposures to drugs or nutrients, then the timing of treatments or meals might be as important as their content or dosage. \u201cMaybe the sequence of nutrients that you consume matters,\u201d Kukushkin told IFLScience. \u201cMaybe the gap between those nutrients matters, and that might change how we digest food in the future, how we store fat, for example.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NYU team\u2019s work shows that even simple cells can encode the passage of time, preserving traces of experience through the same molecular machinery that gives rise to memory in animals. That doesn\u2019t mean your kidney cells recall a melody or a childhood event, but they do seem to register patterns and respond differently the next time. \u201cNon-neural cells are much smarter than we think,\u201d Kukushkin said. <\/p>\n

The findings were published in Nature Communications<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: ZME Science\/Midjourney. We tend to think of memory as exclusively the brain\u2019s domain, but new research suggests…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":302289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3068,3810,19654,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-302288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-learning","9":"tag-memory","10":"tag-neurons","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115371851956989344","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}