Of Mice and Memory

A compound that helps memory recall in brain-damaged mice could pave the way for new drugs to treat dementia.

Treating brain-damaged mice with compounds that affect gene expression restores their ability to recall long-term memories, according to a study in this week's Nature. Raising the mice in a stimulating environment has the same effect. The results suggest that memories, once consolidated, can remain accessible even after significant loss of brain cells. They also open up the possibility of developing drugs to treat the memory loss associated with conditions such as Alzheimer's disease and dementia.

Previous research had produced results similar to the study's finding that environmental enrichment can improve learning. "That's no big deal," says coauthor Li-Huei Tsai of MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, "but in terms of recovery of long-term memory ... we were all stunned."

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