Instant Expert: Rebuilding Human Minds
Memory Lost, Memory Gained koppillustration.comScientists hope to strengthen aging brains by tweaking the behavior of DNA Age-related memory loss-the kind where you remember friends from decades ago but can't remember your grandchildren-is largely a mystery, but a class of com-pounds used to treat cancer has given neuroscientists clues to its molecular underpinnings. Scientists also suspect that the compounds responsible for this insight, called histone deacetylase inhibitors, could significantly slow memory loss-perhaps for years. (Two drugs used now to treat memory loss and Alzheimer's disease work only for a short time.) A study on aging mice by scientists at the European Neuroscience Institute in Germany published this May in Science showed that histone deacetylase inhibitors helped mice perform more than 50 percent better on a memory test than controls did. Study co-author André Fischer says these drugs would be used together with others to treat Alzheimer's patients. Memory Lost, Memory Gained HOW WE...