Study finds every new memory you make harms brain cells

According to research published in the journal Nature, every time we createa memory, it harms our brain sells. This is because each memory creation causes inflammation in the brain and DNA damage in nerve cells as the memories are 'fused' into neurons and preserved.

The memory formation process includes creating and fortifying connections between neurons, which allows information to be stored and retrieved later. However, this process harms the brain cells involved. According to the latest research, the act of remembering something for an extended period causes brain inflammation and DNA damage in nerve cells.

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Researchers conducted experiments on mice for the study and concluded that memory formation occurs within the hippocampus, a portion of the brain that is the major storage store for human memories and is essential to the process of remembering.

"Inflammation of brain neurons is usually considered to be a bad thing since it can lead to neurological problems such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. But our findings suggest that inflammation in certain neurons in the brain's hippocampal region is essential for making long-lasting memories," neuroscientist Jelena Radulovic from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York told Science Alert.

To stimulate their memory, the mice were given brief moderate electric shocks. A closer examination of the hippocampus neurons revealed gene activity in receptor pathways critical for inflammatorysignalling.

Furthermore, that pathway was exclusively active in neuron clusters that had DNA damage. While DNA breaks in the brain occur often, they are typically repaired relatively fast. However, in this case, the changes were bigger. The brain seemed to use processes usually used for making new cells to group neurons together for making memories, without actually making new cells.

"This is noteworthy because we're constantly flooded by information, and the neurons that encode memories need to preserve the information they've already acquired and not be distracted by new inputs," said Jelena Radulovic.