Memories lost and found
Drugs that help mice remember reveal role for epigenetics in recall
By Susan Gaidos
For nearly a decade, neuroscientist Li-Huei Tsai and her colleagues have been studying senile mice. In a lab at MIT her team has genetically fast-forwarded the mice into a condition much like dementia: They have problems making new memories and retrieving old ones. The mice forget how to navigate water mazes they had mastered; they don’t recognize signs of imminent danger they had once responded to fearfully.
Last year, Tsai’s group found a way to reverse the process. When given a drug known to strengthen nerve cell connections in the brain, the mice not only gained back the ability to learn new tasks, but also remembered many forgotten behaviors.