Doctors identify genes influencing long-term memory ability

Doctors in the US have identified more than 750 genes that may influence people's ability to remember information over the long term, as part of a new scientific study.

Researchers from the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University used worms for their investigation, training them to recognise a butterscotch smell, which they managed to recall had an association with food over a 16-hour period.

This allowed the scientists to see which particular genes were at work during this process, allowing them to identify a total of 757 CREB (cAMP-response element-binding protein) genes being used over the 16 hours.

Explaining how this research could potentially benefit humans in the future, senior author of the study and associate professor of molecular biology at the university Coleen Murphy commented: "Worms use the same molecular machinery that higher organisms, including mammals, use to carry out long-term memory."

Therefore, the team believes this finding could pave the way for further research and potential treatments relating to maintaining the cognitive recall ability of people in the future.