Your memory never rests. It tells you where you have just been and where you are headed.
It also helps you recall specific memories, such as a conversation you had with a friend a few days ago that makes you think about another event that happened right after.
This is how our memory works: it is a network of all kinds of memories that are connected in many ways. So there are no drawers with loose events in your head.
And we lose that ability to juggle memories with age. The authors of a new study want to do something about that.
They discovered that a known drug used to treat HIV also restores memory in mice, and perhaps eventually in humans.
Microscopic villain weakens memory
To understand how the researchers got the mice’s memory working again, we first need to zoom in on the inside of the body.
Our cells are covered with different molecules, so-called receptors, which serve as a kind of gateway for the cell.
In the new study, the scientists at the University of California focused on the receptor CCR5, which sits on brain cells.
Previous research had shown that the amount of CCR5 in the memory center increases with age, affecting the ability to make connections between memories.
And there is even an approved drug available that actually blocks CCR5 molecules. This drug is called maraviroc and is now used to prevent the HIV virus from entering the immune cells.
That is why the researchers wanted to know whether the drug also had an effect on the memory of mice.
Researchers: Scale can be increased
In the new trial, the researchers saw that maraviroc blocked the CCR5 molecules and improved the animals’ ability to link memories from one cage to another.
According to the scientists, this shows that maraviroc may be used to tackle age-related memory loss on a larger scale.
The next step now is to conduct the first human clinical trials to find out if the drug can fight – or even eliminate the earliest signs of memory loss.