A pair of recent research results reinforce the idea that - with
suitable engineering - the mental decline that occurs with aging
can be can be greatly slowed or evaded. This is not repair, but
it is a large improvement over the baseline. The work is in
mice, which usually means the effects are more dramatic than
when translated into human clinical therapies. The researchers,
appointed in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas
Health Science Center San Antonio, added rapamycin to the diet
of healthy mice throughout the rodents' life span. Rapamycin, a
bacterial product first isolated from soil on Easter Island,
enhanced learning and memory in young mice and improved these
faculties in old mice, the study showed. "We made the young ones
learn, and remember what they learned, better than what is
normal," said Veronica Galvan, Ph.D., assistant professor of
physiology at the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging
Studies, part of the UT Health Science Center. "Among the older
mice, the ones fed with