By MARK RAGG Sydney scientists have made a discovery about how the brain works that they believe provides a key to understanding learning and memory. They have shown that brain cells communicate with each other by a method known as kiss and run, which is up to four times faster than the previously understood method of communication between brain cells. They have also shown that the rapid kiss and run method of communication can be switched on and off, leaving the way open for the development of drugs to assist learning and memory. The research, to be published next month in the Journal of Neurochemistry , was carried out by Dr Mike Cousins and Dr Phil Robinson of the Children's Medical Research Institute at Westmead. Dr Cousins is now working at the University of Edinburgh.
Brain cells communicate with each other using chemicals known as neurotransmitters.
The neurotransmitters are absorbed by the second nerve cell, which sparks off a message to be passed within that cell to the next nerve or muscle cell. Neuroscientists always understood the vesicles released their neurotransmitters by a process known as complete fusion. The vesicles would sidle up to the outside wall of the cell and be absorbed by it, spilling the chemicals out. But the institute's scientists have built on the work of a Dr Ceccerali of Italy, who showed in 1972 that some vesicles merely had to touch the wall of the cell to releases their neurotransmitters. The brevity led to the term kiss and run.