Ripples in rats’ brains tied to memory may also reduce sugar levels
The results suggest brain cell activity could play a surprising role in the body’s metabolism
Ripples of nerve cell activity that lock in memories may have an unexpected job outside of the brain: Dropping blood sugar levels in the body.
Just after a burst of ripples in a rat’s hippocampus, sugar levels elsewhere in the body dipped, new experiments show. The curveball results, published August 11 in Nature, suggest that certain types of brain activity and metabolism are entwined in surprising and mysterious ways.
“This paper represents a significant advance in our understanding of how the hippocampus modulates metabolism,” says Elizabeth Gould, a neuroscientist at Princeton University who wasn’t involved in the study.
Neural shudders called sharp-wave ripples zig and zag in the brains of people as they learn new things and draw memories back up (SN: 8/19/19). Ripples also feature prominently during deep sleep. Sleeping mammals, birds and even lizards known as Australian dragons have these bursts of electrical activity. Sharp-wave ripples are thought to accompany the neural work of transforming short-term knowledge into long-term memories.