Chip Walter's Blog: Childhood Is Why We Are the Last Ape Standing - Posts Tagged "aging"
The Cure for Your Aging Brain?
Your brain isn’t getting any younger. You know that, right? It happens. And if you have an aging parent or grandparent, you have witnessed the sad results. Memory grows less sharp. Short term memory fades and in some cases disappears altogether as we age. Dementia sets in and eventually the most basic knowledge blips away. This is difficult enough to watch in those you love, but the prospect that the same awaits you down the road isn’t very encouraging either. It strikes terror into your heart every time you can’t seem to quite pluck the name of that actor that was in the–you know, the movie with the horse and the whip and the snakes–from what you fear is the darkening attic of your mind.
Now, though, there may be hope that science can slow or eliminate the loss of the brain’s remarkable ability to retrieve even the most useless information. Research described in Nature Neuroscience carried out by Ana M M Oliveira, Thekla J Hemstedt and Hilmar Bading link the aging brain’s decline with a parallel decline in methylation, a process that affects the regulation and expression of certain cerebral genes. A cure for repeatedly asking “Who are you, again?” may be near.
The scientists identified a specific gene, Dnmt3a2, related to methylation, and found that, in mice at least, it was expressed less often in the aging brains of elderly rodents as opposed to young ones. That seemed to indicate that aging and the expression of the gene, or lack of it, were connected. To test their theory, they used a virus to amp up the older mice’s Dnmt3a2, and low and behold they began to learn better and faster (shades of Charlie and “Flowers for Algernon”). Equally remarkable, when they reduced the expression of Dnmt3a2 in young mice, they began to perform, neurologically speaking, like elderly rodents on lab tests. If this happens in the brains of mice, some version of it very likely happens in human brains.
Bading thinks that as the methylation process, which allows for the expression of Dnmt3a2, slows with aging, and that creates a double whammy because it also reduces the ability of the brain to know, chemically, when the gene should be expressed in reaction to a need for increased concentration and memory. In other words, the brain loses its ability to not only recall, but to focus when it needs to log a memory in the first place, causing the brain to slowly spiral downward and lose its ability to stay sharp.
The $50 billion question, of course, is has the team found a potential cure for memory decline and dementia? They won’t go that far, but think that they might be onto to explaining at least a third of the reasons why our brains decline with age. It’s a start.
So don’t despair, or forget. Future research may yet lead to a cure for the question, “How old did you say you were again?”
By the way, how’s your memory doing? Share a comment below. And if you want to stay sharp, play the All Things Human “Answer This…” game at www.allthingshuman.net, or visit Lumosity.com.
Want to test your memory, try recalling the dialogue in this hilarious Danny Kaye movie scene word for word: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zIWcC...
For more about human nature, the brain and evolution, please also visit www.allthingshuman.net or www.chipwalter.com.
Now, though, there may be hope that science can slow or eliminate the loss of the brain’s remarkable ability to retrieve even the most useless information. Research described in Nature Neuroscience carried out by Ana M M Oliveira, Thekla J Hemstedt and Hilmar Bading link the aging brain’s decline with a parallel decline in methylation, a process that affects the regulation and expression of certain cerebral genes. A cure for repeatedly asking “Who are you, again?” may be near.
The scientists identified a specific gene, Dnmt3a2, related to methylation, and found that, in mice at least, it was expressed less often in the aging brains of elderly rodents as opposed to young ones. That seemed to indicate that aging and the expression of the gene, or lack of it, were connected. To test their theory, they used a virus to amp up the older mice’s Dnmt3a2, and low and behold they began to learn better and faster (shades of Charlie and “Flowers for Algernon”). Equally remarkable, when they reduced the expression of Dnmt3a2 in young mice, they began to perform, neurologically speaking, like elderly rodents on lab tests. If this happens in the brains of mice, some version of it very likely happens in human brains.
Bading thinks that as the methylation process, which allows for the expression of Dnmt3a2, slows with aging, and that creates a double whammy because it also reduces the ability of the brain to know, chemically, when the gene should be expressed in reaction to a need for increased concentration and memory. In other words, the brain loses its ability to not only recall, but to focus when it needs to log a memory in the first place, causing the brain to slowly spiral downward and lose its ability to stay sharp.
The $50 billion question, of course, is has the team found a potential cure for memory decline and dementia? They won’t go that far, but think that they might be onto to explaining at least a third of the reasons why our brains decline with age. It’s a start.
So don’t despair, or forget. Future research may yet lead to a cure for the question, “How old did you say you were again?”
By the way, how’s your memory doing? Share a comment below. And if you want to stay sharp, play the All Things Human “Answer This…” game at www.allthingshuman.net, or visit Lumosity.com.
Want to test your memory, try recalling the dialogue in this hilarious Danny Kaye movie scene word for word: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zIWcC...
For more about human nature, the brain and evolution, please also visit www.allthingshuman.net or www.chipwalter.com.
Childhood Is Why We Are the Last Ape Standing
This is from my January 29, 2013 Slate.com article which explores how our long childhoods enabled us to survive and become The Last Ape Standing. (Published by Bloomsbury/Walker Books.)
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