Is Memory Loss Reversible?

A team of Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC)
researchers has found that
deficiency of a protein called RbAp48 in the hippocampus is a
significant contributor to age-related memory loss and that this form of
memory loss is reversible. 

The hippocampus, a brain region that consists of several
interconnected subregions plays
a vital role in memory. It was
initially thought that age-related memory loss is an early
manifestation of Alzheimer’s. These finding offer the strongest causal evidence that
age-related memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease are distinct conditions. 

Using live lab mice and eight human brains that were donated for
science, the team found that a gene called RbAp48 was linked to the kind of
memory loss associated with aging.

The amount of protein the gene produced was almost 50 percent lower
in old brains than in younger ones, said the study in the US journal
Science Translational Medicine.


They found that switching off
the protein in younger mice made them forgetful, while increasing the
protein in older mice boosted their memory.