Memory loss is a symptom of many neurodegenerative diseases, such as Dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, etc. In this research we examined what are the minimal and crucial activities that preserves the memory, by examination of turtles in a state of minimal activity that is necessary for survival.

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Better understanding of the activities that maintains memory in poor conditions will highlight the important activities for memory conservation in general. For memory formation, I established a behavioral paradigm for training the turtles.

 

The training took place in a unique arena I built for operant conditioning and tracking turtles' behavior over a long time. I then examined the endurance of memories after weeks of cooling at near-zero temperatures. To keep the turtles in a steady temperature of 0 ̊C, I built a new setup for stable cooling. To monitor neuronal activity, I implanted juvenile turtles with electrode arrays to monitor cortical activity during cooling. I found that turtles that were trained to perform a discrimination task precooling, remembered the task after two weeks of cooling, and even performed better than before they were cooled.

 

This study's preliminary results suggest that juvenile turtles can serve as a valuable model system for understanding the impact of prolonged cooling on memory and studying the mechanisms of memory maintenance.

 

Combining behavioral manipulation, cooling, and neurophysiology has the potential to provide an in-depth view of brain activities and memory robustness mechanisms and pave a path towards new treatments and memory preservation methods.