Do you think you will remember everything as you age? Well, it depends. Researchers at the Princeton University have carried out a study that shows that there are two methods of prolonging a person life span that have very varied impacts on the performance of the memory and decline with age. The study is published online on the open-acess journal PLoS Biology.
Whilst the nematode C. elegans is already famous for its utility in researches concerned with longevity, in the past it was not well known how the memory of C. elegans can be compared with that of other animals, or whether there was a possibility that longevity treatments could enhance memory and learning. In order to search the answers of these questions, Amanda Kauffman along with her colleagues of the Coleen Murphy’s laboratory at the Princeton University, designed novel tests related to memory and learning in C. elegans. They thereafter made used of these tests to identify the essential components of learning, short-term memory as well as long-term memory. They discovered that the molecules that were needed for learning and memory seem to be preserved from C. elegans to mammals, implying that the fundamental underlying mechanisms of learning and memory are quite ancient.
The authors were also able to determine the way each of the behaviors decreases as a person ages, and examined the impacts of two known regulators of longevity, namely reduced Insulin/IGF-1 signaling and dietary restriction, on these decreases. Amazingly, very different impacts on memory were obtained with these two longevity treatments: on one hand dietary restriction weakened memory in early adulthood, however, it preserved memory with age, on the other hand reduced Insulin/IGF-1 signaling enhanced the performance of memory in early adulthood, but it failed to preserve it as the person age. Not only do these results imply that longevity treatments could assist in preserving cognitive function with age, but, moreover that diverse longevity treatments might have very varied impacts on such declines.
According to Murphy, as one of the most distressing age-related declines is memory loss, it is stimulating that we now can make use of C. elegans as a model to comprehend not only longevity but as well as memory function. He expresses the wish to use the system to find out novel treatments and drugs for the cognitive decline that are age-related. Perhaps the correct approach would be to adopt more than one longevity pathway.
Source: Escience News and PLOS
Thu, Jun 24, 2010
Bioscience, Health And Aging, Longevity