Creating Memories (broadcast Friday, October 16th, 2009)

Researchers have used pulses of light to store the memory of a bad event that never actually happened into the brains of fruit flies. Writing this week in the journal Cell, the researchers describe their success in directly manipulating the activity of individual neurons responsible for associating a certain odor with a bad experience. By introducing chemicals into those neurons when the odor was present, the researchers found that they could produce flies that 'remembered' experiencing an electric shock connected to the odor, although no actual shock was present. We'll talk about the work and what it means.