There is a reason why we forget

"Memories were meant to fade, Lenny. They're designed that way for a reason." Mace, Strange Days (1995).

***

A recent publication in the Journal Cell (free article available online) elaborates how researchers at Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory discovered a protein that regulates forgetting of short-term memories.  In general, short-term memory refers to the capacity for holding a small amount of information in an animal's neural network (i.e. mind) in an active, readily available state for a short period of time.  The researchers "discovered that three kinds of forgetting – all involving the erasure of short-term memory – are regulated within neurons by the activity of a protein called Rac."  The research was conducted on Drosophila melangaster (fruit fly) both of the wild type (normal) and genetically engineered variety (via standard transposon mutagenesis) to evaluate short-term memory retention with respect to modulation of the Rac protein.

Naturally occurring Rac activation within neurons located in a fruit fly organ called the mushroom body was linked experimentally with three distinct memory-erasure tasks by CSHL Professor Yi Zhong, Ph.D., and colleagues at Tsinghua University in Beijing. One kind of erasure is associated with gradual short-term memory loss (previously considered "passive"); another entails an acute, rapid removal of short-term memory (e.g., "reversal learning"); a third involves a kind of erasure associated with new information that interferes with an existing short-term memory ("interference").

In all three kinds of erasure, the team has found, the process of forgetting is mediated by a mechanism dependent upon the activity level of Rac, a protein that belongs to the Rho family of GTPases. These are a type of protein known to act, among other things, as regulators of the cytoskeleton, the superstructure of cells. Importantly, Zhong and colleagues propose that Rac's role in erasing memory is directly related to its function as a cytoskeleton remodeling agent.

In genetically modified flies, the team elevated Rac activity in mushroom body neurons, which are the seat of olfactory-based memories in the fly. Elevated Rac activity had the effect of accelerating the decay of short-term memories. The process worked in the other direction, too. By inhibiting the activity of Rac they observed that short-term memories decayed more slowly than normal, lasting more than a full day rather than vanishing within three hours, as they do, on average, when Rac is not blocked.

The scientists reported that the Rac-dependent forgetting mechanism in flies did not affect mechanisms involved in the formation of new memories, specifically a pathway associated with the gene Rutabaga that is mediated by the enzyme adenylyl cyclase.

"The molecular basis of short-term memory really has been overlooked by the neuroscience community," says Zhong, a CSHL professor. "It has been widely assumed that such memory is degraded through passive cellular processes. Our experiments challenge the notion by providing evidence of a dedicated mechanism for removing several kinds of short-term memories."

The active forgetting mechanism that Zhong and colleagues have uncovered has potentially adaptive benefits for an organism, they speculate. "The Rac-mediated mechanism makes possible a forgetting strategy that can respond to environmental information," Zhong explains. "For instance, it could be advantageous to forget a memory in disuse that is no longer of biological significance, or a memory inconsistent with current circumstances."

"Forgetting Is Regulated through Rac Activity in Drosophila" appears online ahead of print in Cell February 19. The authors are: Yichun Shuai, Binyan Lu, Ying Hu, Lianzhang Wang, Kan Sun and Yi Zhong. The paper is available online at: DOI 10.1016/j.cell.2009.12.044

Republicans and Idiot America

Above are the results of a poll conducted by Research 2000 on behalf of the liberal blog DailyKos. It outlines the current opinions of those who are self-described Republicans. For those who have been paying attention to the nearly pornographic display of self-assured stupidity that accounts for political discourse from the so-called real Americans, the above results are expected.

The Economist magazine attempts to decompress the numbers as it relates to the American population at large.  While Bruce Bartlett, former George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan official, charges that "between 20% and 50% of the party is either insane or mind-numbingly stupid."  He further notes, that he does not consider himself to be a standing member of the lunatic fringe party.  A position that he expounded in his 2006 book "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy."

What should be noted, is that affiliation to the Republican party is at historic lows, with recent polls placing popular support between 21-24%.   With moderate conservatives fleeing the party in the aftermath of the disastrous Bush years and the proliferation of anti-establishment factions, like the tea baggers and right-wing militia movements, the Republican base has been reduced to the cultists and Southerners.  It is not surprising then that these people, being not the most educated, socially mobile, or economically viable, would have regressive and anti-modernist views.  However, to believe that Obama is a socialist, Caribou Barbie (aka Sarah Palin) is more competent to run the nation, and that homosexuals should be purged from public schools, takes a level of ignorance that one would typically find amongst the illiterate citizens of third world banana republics.

Banks Concerned about Populist Demands

The NY Times (1-Feb. '10) has an article, titled "Curveball Alters Talks on Wall St. Reform," that describes the current state of affairs amongst Democratic and Republican Senators tasked with crafting necessary financial regulatory legislation.  In it is a paragraph that really underscores the dirty secret that everyone knows:

But industry representatives and Democratic Congressional aides say the president’s new proposals have already provoked a sharp increase in the volume and energy of the lobbying on regulatory reform, with more chief executives stepping over their government relations staff to request personal meetings with lawmakers. The big banks, the lobbyists say, have become increasingly alarmed that the legislative process may move in unexpected directions outside their control.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) stated in the same article, "populism doesn’t give you either good regulatory activity or strong markets."  The faux-populism of both parties always reveals itself in the end.  But it's good to know which end of the pitchforks politicians would like to be on, if and when  the whole economic charade that is the US economy comes falling apart.

Eliot Spitzer on Obama's First Year

Spitzer who knows a thing or two about taking on established power, points out in the above video and in his 26-Jan. 2010 State article how Mr. Obama can re-assert the progressive liberal agenda in which he was elected to enact and save the Democrats from electoral defeat in the 2010 midterm elections.

In the article he basically calls Rahm Emanuel (WH Chief of Staff), Larry Summers (Director of the National Economic Council), and Tim Geithner (US Secretary of the Treasury) incompetent political operatives who are a liability to both the Obama presidency and the nation as a whole.

He also contends that the president's working model is useless and Obama needs to aggressively control the legislative process, rather than ceding it to congressional weaklings.

It is time for President Obama to imitate Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt: define the progressive agenda and impose party discipline, use the 59 votes in the Senate—still an overwhelming majority—and an equally robust majority in the House to make every effort to pass the critical pieces of the Democratic agenda and then let the Republicans try to counter.

Mr. Obama has failed repeatedly over the past year to heed the criticisms of those on his left-flank.  As a result, both him and the Democrats, by underwhelming and playing footsie with K-Street, are posed to lose massively in the 2010 midterm elections to the Republicans; whose only solution to America's problems is more war and less taxes.  If he wants the Democrats to continue being an appendage of the corporate state, then he should prepare himself to vacate the White House in 2012, because few who voted for a reformist agenda, to correct the extravagances of the Bush junta, will bother to do so again with the present course of action.

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Bernanke

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wrote on the (27th January, 2010) op-ed pages of USA Today, of his opposition to the re-appointment of Mr. Bernanke to Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of the USA.  He skewers Bernanke for his failure to be forthright about his activities as FED Chairman in the aftermath of the 2008 collapse and for not adequately addressing  the deregulatory mantra that still holds sway amongst FED officials and Wall Street. 

Despite what appeared to be a growing chorus of dissention, Mr Bernanke was reappointed by the Senate on Thursday evening; although with a historic number of oppositional votes (30 nays).  Stock markets responded favorably that the Global Arsonist had been given another term to evade accountability and ensure the wily casino-capitalists of Wall Street, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. which also saw their stocks rise, are well taken care of by friends in high places.

Opposing view: Bernanke must go

Fed chair was asleep at the switch. Don’t reward him with a new term.
By Bernie Sanders

Today, the United States is in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. More than 17% of the American workforce is either unemployed or underemployed. Millions more have lost their homes, their savings, their health care and their pensions.

The immediate cause of this economic disaster is the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of the largest financial institutions in the country. One of the major functions of the Federal Reserve is to protect the safety and soundness of our financial institutions and to oversee their actions. It is clear to almost everyone that Chairman Bernanke was asleep at the switch while Wall Street became the largest gambling casino in the history of the world and hurtled into insolvency. His failure to adequately regulate financial institutions should not be rewarded with a reappointment.

As part of the huge taxpayer bailout of Wall Street, the Fed provided trillions of dollars in virtually zero-interest loans to large financial institutions. Bernanke consistently has refused to provide the transparency needed so that the American people can learn which banks received those loans. Our democracy cannot tolerate this kind of secrecy. We need a new Fed chairman who believes in transparency.

As the country desperately tries to work its way out of this severe recession, the Federal Reserve has the capability of playing a significant role in improving the economy for working families and small- and medium-sized businesses.

Today, it could protect consumers by lowering outrageously high credit card interest rates that millions are paying.

Today, it could help create millions of new jobs by providing low-interest loans to credit-worthy small businesses.

Today, at a time when four of the largest financial institutions issue two-thirds of the credit cards and half the mortgages, and when three out of the four largest are even bigger now that when we bailed them out last year, the Fed could begin the process of breaking up these "too big to fail" banks so we will never have to bail them out again.

We need a new Fed chairman who understands that his or her major task is to protect ordinary Americans, and not just Wall Street CEOs. Ben Bernanke must go.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., serves on the Budget Committee and has placed a procedural hold on the Bernanke nomination