Cited research: Science 328, 753–756 (2010)

Why do learning and memory deteriorate with age? Scientists have speculated that changes in gene expression are involved, but little is known about the mechanism.

André Fischer at the European Neuroscience Institute in Göttingen, Germany, and his colleagues have identified more than 1,500 genes that are upregulated in hippocampal cells in response to learning in three-month-old mice. However, they found that the expression of these 'learning-regulated' genes remained at baseline levels in 16-month-old animals that had performed the same memory tasks. The authors traced this difference to errors in a chemical modification, called acetylation, of the DNA-packaging proteins bound to just these genes.

The team shows that drugs that reverse this modification improve learning and memory in older mice, suggesting that this could be a strategy for treating dementia. A.K.