Failed memory recall does not necessarily reflect information loss
A publication by SungMo Park, working in the Josselyn/Franklin lab at the Hospital for Sick Children, fundamentally reframes how memory impairment is understood by demonstrating that failed recall does not necessarily reflect irreversible information loss. Instead, they show that memories can persist as “silent engrams”—physically encoded neuronal ensembles encoding the memory, but that are rendered inaccessible by disrupted connections. This conceptual shift challenges dominant models of memory failure and introduces engram accessibility as a central, regulated dimension of memory function.
Scientific publication:
Sungmo Park, Joseph Lee, Asim J. Rashid, Chen Yan, Valentina Mercaldo, Alexander D. Jacob, Jung Hoon Jung, Paul W. Frankland, Sheena A. Josselyn. Molecular mechanisms mediating engram ensemble retrievability state in mice. Neuron (2026) 114, 1–16
