Working in Movement

Can an old rat learn new tricks? Maybe not as easily as when it was a young rat, according to research written up in Scientists Pinpoint Aging in the Brain. Scott Small of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons stumbled across this discovery as they were investigating the memory-related brain changes that occur as a normal part of aging instead of from diseases and disorders like Alzheimer's or dementia. There was little or no investigation of such distinctions before.

The research investigated the memory-related brain areas of monkeys and rats. Using humans for such a study would be a problem. Because humans can develop disorders like Alzheimer's, it would be very difficult to distinguish between memory effects due to disease or normal aging processes. Monkeys and rats don't develop these sorts of things.

The monkeys were studied with magnetic reasoning imaging or MRI, a technique that allows observation of blood flow in the brain. It turns out older monkeys have less blood flow in a particular region of the hippocampus, the brain structure most associated with memory.

The researchers observed the rats using a different approach. (Perhaps it's difficult to get the little buggers to sit still enough to observe blood flow?) They looked at the expression of a gene associated with learning in the hippocampus, and found that it declined in older rats.

So maybe an old rat's brain isn't as capable of learning new tricks after all--at least not in a research lab