Learning and Memory - A Conversation with Alcino Silva

Howard Burton

• Publisher: Ideas Roadshow
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781771700849
• Topic: Ciencias biológicas
• Subtopic: Neurociencia

This book is based on an in-depth conversation between Howard Burton and Alcino Silva, Distinguished Professor of Neurobiology, Psychiatry and Psychology at the David Geffen School of Medicine and Director of the Integrated Center for Learning and Memory at UCLA. Alcino Silva runs a learning and memory lab at UCLA that is focused on a vast number of topics, from schizophrenia and autism to learning and memory. This fascinating conversation explores how he and his colleagues focus on understanding the specific molecular mechanisms of neurobiology with the goal of being able to intervene and repair these mechanisms when they go awry. Further topics include plasticity of the brain, implanting memories, how cognitive deficits associated with developmental disorders can be reversed, the importance of "research maps" for the field and inspired optimism for the future.This carefully-edited book includes an introduction, Dom Alcino and the Age of Discoveries, and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter: I. Planting Seeds - Laying the groundwork for future discoveriesII. E Pluribus Unum - Exploring cross-species similaritiesIII. Putting the Pieces Together - The sociology of neuroscience and running a labIV. A Leg to Stand On - Understanding changing synaptic weightsV. Justified Confidence - How to know that you know somethingVI. Smart Mice - Objectively evaluating learning and memoryVII. Manipulating Memories - Turning them off and onVIII. Individual Differences - Searching for principles in a diverse world IX. Treating Cognitive Disorders - Towards reversing cognitive deficits X. Justified Optimism - Making a difference, today and tomorrowXI. Managing Discovery - Harnessing opportunities in an open and mature wayAbout Ideas Roadshow Conversations Series: Presented in an accessible, conversational format, Ideas Roadshow books not only explore frontline academic research featuring world-leading researchers but also reveal the inspirations and personal journeys behind the research.

The Conversation

I. Planting Seeds

Laying the groundwork for future discoveries

HB: There’s an awful lot I’d like to ask you, but I’d first like to talk a little bit about your origins, how you got into the field. My understanding is that you’re of Portuguese descent, but that you spent much of your formative years in Angola.

AS: Yes. My father went there when he was young—the most adventurous of the Portuguese went to the colonies. It was a wonderful place. I left when I was eleven because of the war. Then I spent another few years in Portugal before coming to the States. But Africa was amazing. I have not been able to go back yet, but my father tells me that it’s safe now, so I’m planning to go back. I have “google-visited” the place quite often, spending a few hours navigating around, trying to find places that I recognize.

HB: Is your old house still there?

AS: I haven’t yet been able to find my house, actually, which is strange. I don’t have a very clear memory of where it was relative to big landmarks. I know the general area, but unfortunately I haven’t been able to locate it yet. Luanda is a beautiful city by the ocean. I have great memories of it, but when the war came, everything changed.

HB: So, you came back to Portugal at the age of 11 to start high school, after which you left for the United States, to Rutgers, for your undergraduate degree. Was it a difficult transition when you first arrived?

AS: No. I was so excited. I missed my parents, I missed my girlfriend. But I was so excited to be here. I wanted to leave Portugal at the time because the universities were so disturbed by the revolution in 1974 that disorganized the country. There was a great deal of upheaval that affected universities, and I used that as my excuse to essentially convince my parents to let me go away to the furthest place I could go. I had hitchhiked all over Europe, but it’s hard to hitchhike to the States.

HB: They needed some convincing?

AS: Well, you know, all parents need convincing to part with their child. They have to see with clarity that the place he is going to is good for his future. It was difficult for my parents: I didn’t go home every few months. They knew what it meant for me to come here: that, eventually, I would probably end up getting married and staying here, which is exactly what happened. So they knew that, and it was difficult. But I have done my best: I go back home frequently, and I’ve had associations with Portuguese universities, so I do the best I can to pay back the country and visit my family.

HB: And in 2008, I understand that you were given a very prestigious award from the Government of Portugal, the Order of Prince Henry.

AS: Yes. I was very pleased, especially because the award commemorates one of the most inspiring figures in history that I know, Henry the Navigator, the principal initiator of the Age of Discoveries.

This is a man who established what we now know as an institute at a time when everything was really balkanized. He paid a lot of people to come together and develop navigation, which was very unusual. He gave them large amounts of money and land, and all they had to promise was that they would share everything they knew with each other, which was unheard of.

HB: The original open source.

AS: Yes, that’s right. And they did. They came and formed this institute and he changed the history of Portugal. Then we went elsewhere—and some of that history is checkered, as you know—but it changed the history of Portugal, and it started this concept that you could share knowledge for the greater good.

In fact, it was not simply sharing knowledge: there were also instruments that were developed as a result of these collaborations, because of the Infante Henrique. And the award that I received was commemorating this man whom I admire deeply.

HB: It was all very fitting, then. I hadn’t appreciated that there was a tremendous amount of symbolism of this award in terms of utilizing science and technology, spreading our understanding for the greater good. I had assumed that it was just another award.

AS: Yes. I think it’s one of Portugal’s proudest moments, actually—that, together with another incredible event, where this other king, Dom Denis, planted a forest from the North to the South of Portugal in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Can you imagine the enormous amount of foresight for that, with the vision of developing navigation later on? Imagine the vast resources that you’d have to invest a generation ahead of actually getting any returns. That was Dom Denis.

HB: He was already thinking about navigation back then?

AS: Yes. Because for navigation you need boats, and for boats you need wood, and for that you obviously need forests. We didn’t have enough wood in Portugal.

Another problem was that we had erosion from the wind and sea spoiling some of our land. But that wasn’t really the big thing. The big thing was to plant trees and grow wood for the next generation. Just imagine if our politicians could do that today: plant wood for the next generations.

HB: It’s often hard to get them to see a month ahead, let alone an entire generation.

AS: Exactly. And this was an enormous amount of resources—if I’m correct, half a mile wide through a long stretch of the coast of Portugal. Those woods are still there today, seven hundred years later.

And then later, when we had all this wood and all these boats, came Infante Henrique to develop the science that allowed us to circumnavigate the globe, to go around Africa and South America. I mean, we just went everywhere, you know, because these two men had the vision to do so. It’s really incredible.

We often think about history as disconnected from us, but it has an inspirational side to it: men who are related to you were able to do these types of things. I wonder how many young men in Portugal have thought about that. I think it’s important.

HB: Indeed. And when you came to the United States for your undergraduate degree, my understanding is that you were interested in science, but you were also interested in philosophy—you were interested in epistemology, where knowledge comes from, and so forth. Eventually, you were able to reconnect these things, but I imagine that they were naturally quite separate at the very beginning of your university education.

Did you have these ideas when you first started? When you left Portugal were you thinking “Oh, I really love science, I want to do science, I want to do something in the scientific world,” or was it just a sense of moving away during a tumultuous time and having some new and exciting experiences?

AS: Well, young people love adventures, so that was a big component of it. But another one was science.

HB: So you were already strongly motivated to do science from an early age?

AS: Yes, I was.

HB: Did you have a sense of what sort of science you wanted to do back then?

AS: Not really. But science really motivated me; and the question of knowing how we know was always at the center. When you’re young, you don’t think of things the way you eventually do, but in Portugal people took philosophy classes in high school, which is really interesting. I had two years of philosophy in high school; and one of the questions that fascinated me the most was, How do we know what we know?

It was clear to me that this question was ce...