Article Date: 03 Aug 2011 – 0:00 PDT
The discovery of a mechanism in the brain explains for the first time why people make particularly strong, long-lasting memories of stressful events in their lives and could help sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder.
The study, carried out by researchers from the University of Bristol’s Henry Wellcome Laboratories for Integrative Neuroscience & Endocrinology (HW-LINE) in the School of Clinical Sciences, and funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), is published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The research found that stress hormones directly stimulate biochemical processes in neurons that play a role in learning and memory. The way these hormones stimulate these signalling and epigenetic processes in neurons is completely new and has never been shown before.
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