Lightspring/Shutterstock
In June 2000, Discover published an article about how we could someday be speedier learners. Want to memorize a Shakespearean play? Just read it through once. Want to learn another language? Give yourself about a month. All this with the help of a memory-enhancing pill.
At the center of the article (“Smart Pills: How About a Little Viagra for Your Memory?”) was a protein called CREB, or cyclic AMP response element binding protein. It works as an on-switch in the brains of humans and many animals, promoting new connections between neurons to help build long-term memory.
Scientists at New York’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, featured in the 2000 article, were inspired by fruit flies. They had genetically engineered one group of the insects to produce high CREB levels and another to produce low levels. In a setup to test learning rates, high-CREB flies knew, after one zap, to avoid ...
