Kandel, whose work has turned up evidence for CPEB holding memories in sea slugs and mice, says that the new study makes the concept that prions can stabilize memories “quite definitive now.”
JJJ2 didn’t lead to supersmart flies that could learn everything quickly, though. The boost only came for memories that would have been formed anyway, Si says. The change “lowered the threshold for memory formation, but it has not created a situation where now all information that comes in is turned into long-term memory,” he says. “It can only [affect] memory when the conditions are right to produce a memory.”
The Orb2 results come from just long-term memory. “There could be other biochemical processes for other types of memory,” such as immune cells’ memories of former threats, Si says. Still, it’s possible that protein accumulation is one of the fundamental ways memory works.