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When successful, Dr. The result was about 10 microliters of cerebrospinal fluid—roughly one-fifth the size of a drop of water, Iram said. To collect enough infusions, he had to perform the procedure on hundreds of mice, and Dr. It tamed the technical difficulties that Wyss-Coray warned of with pure repetition power.
Dr. “I like to do this type of work that takes a lot of perseverance,” Iram said. “I just set a goal and I’m not stopping.”
To infuse young cerebrospinal fluid into old mice, Dr. Iram made a small hole in their skulls and placed a pump under the skin in their upper backs. For comparison, a separate group of aged mice was given artificial cerebrospinal fluid.
A few weeks later, the mice were exposed to cues they had previously learned to associate with shocks to their feet—a tone and a flashing light. Animals that received the young cerebrospinal fluid infusion tended to freeze longer, suggesting that they retained stronger memories of the original foot shocks.
“This is a very nice study that seems scientifically sound to me,” said Matt Kaeberlein, a University of Washington biologist on aging who was not involved in the research. “This adds to the growing evidence that it is possible, perhaps surprisingly easy, to restore function in aged tissues by targeting biological mechanisms of aging.”
Dr. Iram sought to determine how juvenile cerebrospinal fluid helps preserve memory by analyzing the hippocampus, a part of the brain devoted to memory formation and storage. He found that treating the aged mice with the liquid had a strong effect on cells that act as precursors to oligodendrocytes, which produce layers of fat known as myelin, which insulate nerve fibers and provide strong signal connections between neurons.
The study’s authors focused on a specific protein in the juvenile cerebrospinal fluid that plays a role in initiating the cascade of events that lead to stronger nerve isolation. The study found that the protein known as fibroblast growth factor 17, or FGF17, can be infused into older cerebrospinal fluid and partially replicate the effects of younger fluid.
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