New conversation on sociotechnical systems

The MIT Sociotechnical Systems Research Center invites you to its next spring seminar in the "Conversations on Sociotechnical Systems" series on Wed., April 30, from 4:15-5:30 p.m. in Building E38-615. Light refreshments will be served.

Traumatic events generate some of our most enduring memories. The most efficacious treatments to diminish recent traumata capitalize on memory-updating mechanisms during reconsolidation, which are initiated upon memory recall. In mice, reconsolidation-updating models that successfully modified recent memories failed to diminish remote ones. This seminar will illustrate how the chromatin enzyme histone deacetylase 2 (HDAC2) affects synaptic plasticity and memory formation in mice. It will explain how histone deacetylase inhibitors inhibitors can make both recent and remote memories more malleable to change — and may therefore constitute a treatment option for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Li-Huei Tsai, director of MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, will present “The Role of Epigenetics-Mediated Gene Expression in Memory Reconsolidation.”