From New York University, we learned recently that the body’s memories are not made only in the brain. A recent study finds that “kidney and nerve tissue cells learn and make memories in ways similar to neurons”:

The research sought to better understand if non-brain cells help with memory by borrowing from a long-established neurological property—the massed-spaced effect—which shows that we tend to retain information better when studied in spaced intervals rather than in a single, intensive session—better known as cramming for a test.

In the Nature Communications research, the scientists replicated learning over time by studying two types of non-brain human cells in a laboratory (one from nerve tissue and one from kidney tissue) and exposing them to different patterns of chemical signals—just like brain cells are exposed to patterns of neurotransmitters when we learn new information. In response, the non-brain cells turned on a “memory gene”—the same gene that brain cells turn on when they detect a pattern in the information and restructure their connections in order to form memories.

James Devitt, November 7, 2024 The paper is open access.

The researchers hope that their find will help with treating memory problems. Such problems are commonly associated with dementia, a growing issue due to an aging population. According to Alzheimer International,

Someone in the world develops dementia every 3 seconds. There are over 55 million people worldwide living with dementia in 2020. This number will almost double every 20 years, reaching 78 million in 2030 and 139 million in 2050. Much of the increase will be in developing countries. Already 60% of people with dementia live in low and middle income countries, but by 2050 this will rise to 71%. The fastest growth in the elderly population is taking place in China, India, and their south Asian and western Pacific neighbours. “Numbers of people with dementia”

In the United States, seven million people now live with Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia, and by 2050, the number is expected to rise to nearly 13 million.

On the brighter side, perhaps when we say “My hands remember,” or “My feet remember,” or – less promisingly — “my stomach remembers all too well” we could be in for a surprise about where, exactly, all parts of that particular memory are stored.