Natural Sciences Active Updated Aug 14, 2026
A memory can survive losing most of its synapses
Neuroscience has long assumed a memory lives or dies with the exact pattern of synapses that encoded it. A study using artificial hibernation in mice found a fear memory survived even after more than half the relevant hippocampal synapses vanished, raising the stakes for how dementia, brain injury and memory loss actually work at the physical level.
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Aug 14, 2026 Latest
Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology gave mice a mild foot shock paired with an alcohol scent, then put half of them into two days of artificial hibernation by slowing their metabolism with drugs. Five days later the hibernated mice still froze at the same scent even though more than half the synapses in their hippocampus's memory-storing neurons had disappeared during that time.
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