The paper:
A. Fischer et al., “Recovery of learning and memory is associated with chromatin remodeling,” Nature, 447:178–82, 2007. (Cited in 82 papers)
The finding:
Li-Huei Tsai and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed that mentally stimulating environment caused chromatin modifications that restored learning and long-term memory in a mouse model of severe neurodegeneration. Treatment with histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors alone—which yielded less compact and more transcriptionally active chromatin—also led to a memory boost, even after significant brain atrophy and neuronal loss.
The impact:
The study “starts to shed some light on how HDAC inhibitors are enhancing synaptic plasticity of memory” by rewiring the brain to retrieve long-lost memories, says Marcelo Wood, a molecular neurobiologist at the University of California, Irvine.
The treatment:
Tsai’s team showed that increased neuronal levels of HDAC2, but not HDAC1, are related to a reduction in synapse number, dendrite density, and learning ability ...
