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Did you ever wonder how people can learn to ride a bicycle or smell a rose just once but remember it for a lifetime? These researchers shed light on such questions by observing the morphology of mouse dendritic spines (DSs) during memory formation.
Researchers used fluorescent labeling and confocal microscopy to count DSs in motor cortical regions of mice trained to run on an accelerating rod (rotarod), untrained mice, and mice running on a stationary rod. The investigators also examined DSs in sensory regions of mice that lived in either an enriched environment (EE) or a standard one. Both adult and immature mice (<postnatal day 30) underwent the same experiments.
Both adult and immature mice that had rotarod training or were moved to the EE…