New Treatment for Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome

If you saw the Nov. 26, 2006 edition of "60 Minutes" on TV, you learned about a promising new treatment, and sometimes cure, for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Actually, I discussed many of these ideas in my memory-improvement book and posted an explanation of this specific idea months ago on my Web site, and I have now updated it to report that physicians have actually embraced the findings of memory research and shown that treatment with a common blood-pressure drug, propranolol, can have strikingly beneficial results on PTSD.

See the latest update at my Web site. Locate "Medical Issues" on the Contents page and click on the item involving PTSD.

Social Networks Provide "Protective Reserve" for Alzheimer's Disease

In an earlier posting, I reviewed a study that showed that staying mentally active can help some people to protect against development of symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, even when some brain lesions of the disease are present. The usual explanation is that a lifetime of high mental activity creates a kind of protective reserve. Now another study reveals that close contact with friends, relatives and social networks can offer a similar protective-reserve effect. Check the "Medical Issues" section of my Web site's summaries of memory research. Click here.

Gene therapy helps memory

A new research report just out shows that gene therapy, targeted against stress hormones, helps memory. As I explain in my book, stress hormones are bad for memory.

Here is the press release:


Contact: Mark Shwartz
mshwartz@stanford.edu
650-723-9296
Stanford University

Scientists use gene therapy to improve memory and learning in animals

Stanford University neuroscientists have designed a gene that enhances memory and learning ability in animals under stress. Writing in the Nov. 8 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, the Stanford team says that the experimental technique might one day lead to new forms of gene therapy that can reduce the severe neurological side effects of steroids, which are prescribed to millions of patients with arthritis, asthma and other illnesses.

"Steroids can mess up the part of the brain involved in judgment and cognition," said neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky, co-author of the study. "In extreme cases it's called steroid dementia. Ideally, if you could deliver this gene safely, it would protect the person from some of these cognitive side effects, while allowing the steroid to do whatever helpful thing it should be doing elsewhere in the body."

Sapolsky, the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Biological Sciences and a professor of neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford, has conducted numerous experiments on the damaging physiological effects of stress and has written extensively on the subject, including a 1995 book, "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers."

Hormonal effects

In the Journal of Neuroscience study, Sapolsky and his colleagues focused on the effect of stress on the hippocampus, a part of the brain that's important for learning and memory. Nerve cells throughout the hippocampus contain numerous receptors that respond to a group of steroid hormone called glucocorticoids, which are secreted from the adrenal glands in male and female rats during times of stress. When high levels of these corticoids bind to the hippocampal receptors, they can trigger a destructive biochemical cascade that damages nerve cells in the hippocampus and ultimately impairs memory and learning.

But not all hormones are bad. Estrogen, the primary female sex hormone, enhances memory and can therefore block the negative cognitive effects of the corticoids.

"Estrogen protects memory against stress," said former Stanford postdoctoral fellow Andrea Nicholas, lead author of the study, who was recently named an adjunct professor at St. Mary's College. "In women, there are long-term protective effects of estrogen in the brain. As people age, females often fare better than males cognitively, in part because they have that estrogenic protection."

In a 2004 study, Sapolsky and his co-workers showed that gene therapy could be used to neutralize the deleterious effects of stress in laboratory rats. The idea behind gene therapy is eventually to cure a disease or repair an injury by injecting a beneficial gene into the patient's DNA. For the experiment, Sapolsky and his team created what geneticists call a chimera--an experimental strand of DNA made with two genes stitched together, in this case a glucocorticoid-receptor gene from a rat combined with an estrogen-receptor gene from a human.

When this new chimeric gene was injected into the hippocampus of a rat, the result was dramatic. The gene produced new protein receptors that quickly converted stress-inducing glucocorticoids into beneficial estrogen signals.

Novel Stimuli May Help Memory

In a study on the neurochemical effects of novel stimuli during learning, a group at University College of London found that the brain’s reward-system neurons respond better to novel stimuli than to ordinary stimuli. That is, novel stimuli can have rewarding properties, and thus make us pay more attention to them. In the purely behavioral aspects of their study, subjects viewing a succession of visual images were able to remember more of them if an occasional new image was presented. For a fuller exploration of the implications, go to my posting on this piece of research.

But be careful. Novel stimuli can also be a distraction and have marked interference effects on consolidation. Learn about consolidation and interference in my book.

Sleep loss impairs memory BEFORE learning

I just came back from the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. One of the papers presented there reported experiments showing that depriving college students of sleep impaired their ability to remember what they learn the following day. I have the details at my Web site.

Earlier posts at my Web site explain research that sleep loss impairs memory of events that occurred during that same day. Now, this research shows "proactive" impairment. We professors always knew that pulling "all nighters" where students stay up all night to study for an exam made them do dumb things on an exam. Now we know that this sleep loss impairs not only what they learned the day before but also what they are supposed to learn the next day. When will students learn that?

Book of essays on working memory

I just ran across a book by Nelson Cowan on working memory, published in 2005 by Psychology Press. It is available from Amazon for $44.95. It is probably scholarly and not intended for a general audience. I ordered a copy and will let you know what I think about it.

Bill Klemm
"Memory Medic"

Menopause impairs memory

A new study just reported from McGill University in Montreal confirms that female sex hormone is necessary for optimal memory function in women. In this study, the researchers measured memory before and after menopause in25 women. The women, average age of 36 yrs, had tumors of the uterus and their ovary function was deliberately suppressed to the point of menopause by drugs to control the cancer. Significant decreases in memory scores were produced. The women were still mentally functioning at an acceptable level, but the memory decline "was noticeable and documentable."

By the way, this study confirms (without acknowledging) one of the first experiments I ever did on memory, published in 1968. In that study I removed the ovaries from rats and found that they performed poorly in one-trial learning tests, compared to intact rats. Reference: Communications in Behavior Biology, Vol. 1 (1968), p. 109-114.

Humor Makes It Memorable

Ever wonder why so many radio and TV commercials are humorous? It is because psychologists have found that humor makes things more memorable. Steven Schmidt at MIddle Tenessee State U. conducted a study with 38 undergraduates. He had them read sentences such as "There are three ways a man can wear his hair: parted, unparted, and departed." He also had them read two versions of the same point that were not humorus. Students remembered the funny sentences better than the straight ones.

Ron Berk, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins, has even written a book for teachers, entitled "Humor as an Instructional Defibrillator." He cites many examples of how teachers can be more effective if what they teach is presented with humor.