Scientists Just Discovered That Some Memories Don’t Live in Our Brains

• The process of memory is often tied to the brain, but a new study reveals that other cells outside our skulls contain their own kind of “body memory.”
• In a new study, scientists also discovered that these memory genes acted similarly to neurons in that they more effectively “learned” through spaced-out repetition rather than just one giant cram session.
• Gaining a deeper understanding of this “body memory” could help scientists and clinicians create new ways to address diseases and other maladies.

Memory—and by extension, learning—is central to life on Earth and its greatest intellectual byproduct: the scientific method. The ability to test hypotheses, draw on past experience, and develop new ways of thinking lies at the cornerstone of our modern society. Our language often describes this process as a purely cerebral pursuit. After all, the smartest among us are often labeled “brainiacs,” but a new study suggests that the ability to learn isn’t exclusive to the brain.

A team of researchers at New York University (NYU) set out to determine if other cells in the body, in this case kidney and nerve cells, could store memory like neurons. This isn’t the same as, say, recalling specific moments in your life, but instead memories of specific patterns to help perform their life-sustaining functions. What they found is that other cells do contain a sense of a memory and also follow a specific neurological property known as the massed-spaced effect. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Communications.

“This discovery opens new doors for understanding how memory works and could lead to better ways to enhance learning and treat memory problems,” NYU’s Nikolay Kukushkin, a co-author of the study, said in a press statement. “At the same time, it suggests that in the future, we will need to treat our body more like the brain—for example, consider what our pancreas remembers about the pattern of our past meals to maintain healthy levels of blood glucose or consider what a cancer cell remembers about the pattern of chemotherapy.”

In 1885 German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus detailed the idea of “spaced repetition,” or massed-spaced effect, in his book Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. This refers to the idea that the best method of learning is through repeated, spaced study sessions rather than massed presentation (or what’s commonly known across high school and college campuses as “cramming.”) Kukushkin and his team focused on these two types of learning in cells by introducing different patterns of chemical signals, which essentially mimicked brain cells as they’re exposed to patterns of neurotransmitters. To study this memory-making effect, the scientists developed the cells with a protein that glowed when the “memory gene” was activated.

The scientists noticed that when the chemical patterns were introduced in space-out intervals, the “memory gene” turned on more strongly and for longer intervals than when exposed to a prolonged exposure.

“This reflects the massed-space effect in action,” Kukushkin said in a press statement. “It shows that the ability to learn from spaced repetition isn’t unique to brain cells, but, in fact, might be a fundamental property of all cells.”

Writing for Psychology Today, Kukushkin also notes that this “body memory” could play a profound role in health and disease while also providing powerful evidence of the power of repeated learning, which can strengthen memory instead of slowly losing useful information to Ebbinghaus’ “forgetting curve.”

So if you’ve got a big test coming up, it’s biologically advantageous to hit books early and often rather than slogging through a sleepless night of cramming.

Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.