MILWAUKEE \u2013 Memory decline is a part of aging for most people, but very few treatments are available to reverse this loss because the deeper cellular mechanisms underlying memory formation are not fully known.<\/p>\n
A paper from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), led by Professor of Psychology Karyn Frick, identifies a new cellular mechanism necessary for memory.<\/p>\n
Frick and her team investigated a cell-signaling pathway in the hippocampus \u2013 an area of the brain critical to learning and memory \u2013 and found that it must be activated for learning and memory to take place. Findings were recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience.<\/em><\/p>\n The Wnt signaling pathway has been associated with learning and shown to play a role in neuron development, but not specifically in memory formation.<\/p>\n Using female mice, the team found that learning about objects not only activated the canonical Wnt pathway in the hippocampus, but also that Wnt signaling was necessary for the mice to form a memory of the objects. These data suggest a vital new role for this molecular pathway in hippocampal memory formation.<\/p>\n Because Wnt signaling is impaired in aging and Alzheimer\u2019s disease, these findings point to Wnt signaling as a new target for drug discovery.<\/p>\n \u201cThis information is essential for understanding what happens in the brain when memory formation doesn\u2019t happen properly, like during aging and in Alzheimer\u2019s disease,\u201d says Frick. \u201cThe goal of my lab\u2019s research is to identify the specific molecules in the brain that are necessary for memory formation, which could lead to the development of new drugs for age-related memory loss that target these specific molecules.\u201d<\/p>\n Now Frick\u2019s team plans to determine whether treatments that activate canonical Wnt signaling can reverse memory deficits in aged female mice.<\/p>\n Other authors of the paper included Ashley Fortress, Sarah Schram and Jennifer Tuscher in Frick\u2019s lab. This study was funded by UWM and by an Ellison Medical Foundation\/American Federation for Aging Research Postdoctoral Fellowship in Aging.<\/p>\n ###<\/p>\n (CONTACT: Karyn Frick, 414-20-6615, frickk@uwm.edu.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, led by Professor of Psychology Karyn Frick, hav identified a new cellular mechanism necessary for memory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":837,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[202],"tags":[],"section":[],"display_categories":[],"related-coverage":[],"uwmnews-feed":[],"class_list":["post-8328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-releases"],"yoast_head":"\n