structural:expansion, information:filtering, stylistic:style_transfer, structural:summarization
In the brain

Two reviews summarize evidence that DNA methylation alterations in brain neurons are important in learning and memory. Contextual fear conditioning (a form of associative learning) in animals, such as mice and rats, is rapid and is extremely robust in creating memories. In mice and in rats contextual fear conditioning, within 1–24 hours, it is associated with altered methylations of several thousand DNA cytosines in genes of hippocampus neurons. Twenty four hours after contextual fear conditioning, 9.2% of the genes in rat hippocampus neurons are differentially methylated. In mice, when examined at four weeks after conditioning, the hippocampus methylations and demethylations had been reset to the original naive conditions. The hippocampus is needed to form memories, but memories are not stored there. For such mice, at four weeks after contextual fear conditioning, substantial differential CpG methylations and demethylations occurred in cortical neurons during memory maintenance, and there were 1,223 differentially methylated genes in their anterior cingulate cortex. Mechanisms guiding new DNA methylations and new DNA demethylations in the hippocampus during memory establishment were summarized in 2022. That review also indicated the mechanisms by which the new patterns of methylation gave rise to new patterns of messenger RNA expression. These new messenger RNAs were then transported by messenger RNP particles (neuronal granules) to synapses of the neurons, where they could be translated into proteins. Active changes in neuronal DNA methylation and demethylation appear to act as controllers of synaptic scaling and glutamate receptor trafficking in learning and memory formation.