Welcome to another edition of Cool Facts on the Human Upgrade.

If you like these short hits of Cool Facts, go to Davasprey.com and tell me what I should

include next time.

This cool fact is about a gene that can interfere with the way your brain links memories.

You might have noticed that when one memory pops up, your brain will automatically bring

up others right afterwards that are related to it.

And that's due to a specific mechanism in your brain called memory linking.

It's the way your brain organizes information and assists with recall.

If you've wondered why I know all the weird stuff I know about biohacking, it's because

my memory linking works pretty well, probably from stress conditioning as a teacher

a year ago.

But when memory linking fails, it's more challenging to remember things.

This affects people with dementia in particular.

So UCLA researchers discovered a critical molecular mechanism that's behind your memory

linking, well at least if you're a mouse that is, and it's called the CCR5 receptor.

Yes, humans have that as well.

When the CCR5 receptor expresses on cells, it inhibits memory linking.

We know a lot about CCR5 because it's also a cellular receptor that HIV likes to hitch

a ride on in order to infect brain cells and cause memory loss.

The UCLA researchers found that when they upregulated CCR5 in mice, it increased memory

loss, but when they inhibited CCR5, the mice could link memories that typical mice wouldn't

be able to.

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