Word: tonegawa
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McHugh's senior colleague Susumu Tonegawa, a Nobel laureate for his work on the genetics of immunity, had uncovered a related mechanism, called pattern completion, several years ago. That enables you to retrieve complete memories based on just a single cue--for example, the question "Did we go to school together?" He and McHugh suspected, based on this earlier work, that they could identify the specific gene that regulated pattern separation...
...also this circuit, the scientists are convinced, that explains déjà vu. Every so often, they believe, the pattern-separation circuit misfires, and a new experience that's merely similar to an older one seems identical. "It doesn't happen very often to most people," Tonegawa says. Intriguingly, some people with epilepsy have this experience all the time. "Epileptic seizures involve random firing of neurons in the temporal lobes, which include the hippocampus," he says, and that could scramble the circuit...
...people with epilepsy-induced déjà vu usually don't experience the same disturbing eeriness that's so common in others. And that difference supports McHugh and Tonegawa's theory as well. "We suspect that the strange feeling comes from a conflict between two parts of the brain," Tonegawa says. "The neocortex is aware of the fact that you've never been in a situation before. The hippocampus is telling you that, yes, you have...
...basic research scientists, Tonegawa and McHugh don't claim that their work will lead to a drug or therapy--not yet. And if it does, nobody is likely to focus on déjà vu, a mere side effect of memory. But a fuller understanding of how the hippocampus works could lead to the creation of a drug that strengthens the pattern-recognition circuit, which could help people overcome fearful memories that are triggered by associations with a familiar-seeming place (like a dentist's office). Of course, if you strengthen the circuitry too much, you might get the opposite illusion...
...these immune cells produce such diversity was elucidated during the mid- 1970s by Immunologist Susumu Tonegawa, now at M.I.T., who in 1987 was awarded the Nobel Prize for his achievement. Tonegawa proved that the B-cell genes that dictate the production of antibodies occur in distinct segments. These pieces, like cards in the hands of a Las Vegas dealer, are constantly and speedily shuffled into different combinations. Coupled with mutations that occur as B cells divide into plasma cells, such genes, in theory at least, could account for as many as 10 million antibody variations. Other scientists have shown that...