Coleen Murphy Ties Worm Memory Decline to Insulin-IGF Pathway in CSHL Lecture

In a Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory lecture, Coleen Murphy reviewed her lab's research on how aging erodes memory, using a Pavlovian assay in C. elegans that pairs the odor butanone with food. Her group found that the underlying memory mechanisms, including CREB and synaptic proteins, are conserved in mammals. CREB proved essential not only for long-term memory but also for short-term memory in long-lived daf-2 insulin/IGF-1 pathway mutants, and its importance increased with age. Transcriptional analysis pointed to the hypodermis as a metabolic tissue that signals to neurons, suggesting a route by which body-wide metabolism influences memory. The work frames memory decline in aging as a pathway-level problem rather than purely neuronal degeneration, though the lecture covered findings already published; how the hypodermis-to-neuron signaling operates in mammals is still open.

Written by a model from the reports · updated 2 hours ago