August 2005

News tips from The Journal of Neuroscience

1. Memory Consolidation and the VOR
Charles D. Kassardjian, Yao-Fang Tan, Ji-Yeon J. Chung, Raquel Heskin, Michael J. Peterson, and Dianne M. Broussard

The consolidation of memories may involve sites remote from where they form. This week, Kassardjian et al. explore motor memory consolidation using the cat vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR), which holds the visual world steady during rapid head movements. The authors suggest that after initial memory formation, the consolidation phase involves a site outside of the cerebellum.

2. Parkin and One of Its Substrates, p38
Han Seok Ko, Rainer von Coelln, Sathya R. Sriram, Seong Who Kim, Kenny K. K. Chung, Olga Pletnikova, Juan Troncoso, Brett Johnson, Roya Saffary, Eyleen L. Goh, Hongjun Song, Bum-Joon Park, Min Jung Kim, Sunghoon Kim, Valina L. Dawson, and Ted M. Dawson

Oneof the familial forms of Parkinson's disease (PD), autosomal recessive juvenile parkinsonism (AR-JP), arises from a mutation in parkin, a ubiquitin ligase that normally targets proteins for degradation. This week, Ko et al. make a case that accumulation of a parkin substrate could be important in the pathogenesis of PD.