Investigation of the memory forgetting induced by adult hippocampal neurogenesis

Abstract

Adult neurogenesis is the generation of new neurons in the postnatal brain. In particular, the hippocampus, one of the sites where adult neurogenesis mainly occurs, is known to be important for spatial and contextual memory. However, it has recently been shown that adult hippocampal neurogenesis is not only important for storing new memories, but also for forgetting old ones. So far, studies on memory forgetting caused by adult hippocampal neurogenesis have only observed the phenomenon of memory forgetting, but the purpose and related molecular mechanism have not been studied yet. Also, it is not known whether forgotten memories are permanent erasing or failure of memory retrieval. This study suggests that memory forgetting occurs due to failure of memory retrieval and proposed the direction of related experiments in the future.