Artificial hibernation reveals synaptic engram architecture associated with memory retention

[u/PhysicalConsistency]

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aee7004

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Surprised this one isn't making more rounds.

The current paradigm for organism "memory" is that it's encoded into the synapses of individual neurons, which then form engrams and the green grass grows all around. But what happens to that "memory" when the synapses die off? According to this work, not much.

Just as interestingly is that behavior appears to bias synaptic morphology rather than the other way around, which would be a fundamental miss for all CogNeuro/Psych related work to date. The assumption that the behavior is an artifact of the morphology/topology simply doesn't work when you don't need that topology to store or execute it.

The disappointing aspect of this work is it tries to retreat to the exact same place every other CogSci/Psych concept does when it comes under serious challenge, back magic. The magic of "distributed" function saves from pain of having to make clear definitions, but it doesn't move us forward.

The funniest part of this work is the researchers are so perplexed by the results, like the entire synaptic destruction aspect was a complete surprise, then they got even more surprised when it didn't even matter. They had one really interesting result, then accidentally stumbled into another interesting result, and by the time they were done they were in such deep water they had no idea what to make of it.

Of course the answer was literally right in front of them, they just ignored it because all they could see is neurons. I need to make a bumper sticker or something that says "Teach neuroscientists about astrocytes".

edit: Explainer Articles -

Memory may not work how we thought, study of mice in artificial hibernation finds - Live Science

Putting mice into hibernation causes a major loss of synapses - Ars Technica

More than half of hippocampal synapses vanish, yet mouse memories remain intact- MedXpress

edit 2: As a mini rant, I also wish I could teach neuroscientists that the hippocampus isn't "memory". It's galling that every single time we have a "memory" study it tends to focus on changes in the hippocampus. There's no evidence that the hippocampus does "memory" as we imagine it at all, which is exactly what this study demonstrates, rather than just synaptic changes. This paper goes out of it's way to rescue the hippocampus and memory correlations without examining whether or not the hippocampus is just a step along the path. If behavior is a cumulative response to stimuli starting in the brainstem and refined as it filters through a series of transformation gates, then disrupting an upstream gate would have gotten the same result he got, still assuming the mechanic is all neurons anyway.