24 de abril de 1997
La Jolla, CA – Salk investigators have discovered that aging mice living in a stimulating environment display three times the number of new brain cells as mice who live in a non-stimulating environment. The age of the mice in the study was 18 months – the human equivalent of 65 years.
The findings are reported in the May 1 issue of the Revista de Neurociencia; senior author is Fred Gage, PhD.
The current study builds on research reported a year ago by The Salk Institute in which it was shown, for the first time, that young adult mice can receive a boost in brain cells when exposed to an enriched environment (April 3, 1997, Nature).
“The results are even more pronounced in ‘senior citizen’ mice,” said Gerd Kempermann, MD, of The Salk Institute Laboratory of Genetics.
In the current study, Kempermann and H. Georg Kuhn, PhD, separated 18-month-old “senior citizen” mice into two groups: one group housed in “standard” conditions (cage containing only food and water) and the other group placed in a large cage “enriched” with tunnels, toys and an exercise wheel. After sixty-eight days, the brains from both groups were compared for the number of new nerve cells.
The mice living in enriched conditions were found to have generated three times as many new nerve cells in the hippocampus, a part of the brain important for learning and memory, when compared to the control group. The earlier experiments on younger animals from both enriched and standard groups displayed a difference of 60% between the groups.
“The benefit of the enriched environment appears to be in fostering the survival of new brain cells,” said Kempermann.
Scientists have known since the 1960s that laboratory animals raised in a complex environment out performed their litter mates on standard learning tests, such as navigating mazes. The biological mechanisms responsible for performance improvements were unknown but believed to lie in increased numbers of connections between existing cells. The 1997 study on young adult mice revealed that the number of new nerve cells in the brain actually increased.
The research was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Institute on Aging, the American Paralysis Association and the International Spinal Research Trust. In addition, Kempermann is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Kuhn receives funding from the Hereditary Disease Foundation.
El Instituto Salk de Estudios Biológicos, ubicado en La Jolla, California, es una institución independiente sin fines de lucro que realiza investigación científica básica dedicada a la mejora de la salud humana y al aumento de la cantidad y calidad del suministro mundial de alimentos.
Sus dos áreas principales de concentración son neurociencia y biología molecular-celular y genética; El Instituto Salk fue recientemente clasificado como la institución de investigación número uno a nivel mundial en ambas áreas por el Instituto de Información Científica, con sede en Filadelfia.
El Instituto Salk fue fundado en 1960 por Jonas Salk, MD, pionero de la vacuna contra la polio, con una donación de terrenos por parte de la Ciudad de San Diego y el apoyo financiero de la March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation. Thomas D. Pollard, MD, es el Presidente y Director Ejecutivo.
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