Toward a molecular definition of long-term memory storage.

"Abstract: The storage of long-term memory is associated with a cellular program of gene expression, altered protein synthesis, and the growth of new synaptic connections. Recent studies of a variety of memory processes, ranging in complexity from those produced by simple forms of implicit learning in invertebrates to those produced by more complex forms of explicit learning in mammals, suggest that part of the molecular switch required for consolidation of long-term memory is the activation of a cAMP-inducible cascade of genes and the recruitment of cAMP response element binding protein-related transcription factors. This conservation of steps in the mechanisms for learning-related synaptic plasticity suggests the possibility of a molecular biology of cognition." Full text available from pnas.org at this link.

In 2000 Eric Kandel shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Arvid Carlsson and Paul Greengard "for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system."