Learning a new language or how to play a musical instrument becomes more difficult with age, as does remembering where the car keys are. These drops in learning and memory parallel changes in the gut microbiome, the collection of bacteria and other microorganisms that colonize the intestines and have a meaningful effect on health.
John Cryan, a neuroscientist at University College Cork, and his colleagues revealed recently in Nature Aging that microbes transferred from young to aged mice reversed aging-associated changes in brain immunity and metabolism. The study suggests that the microbiome may be an appropriate therapeutic target for treating age-related cognitive decline.
“It’s a fabulous paper,” said Jane Foster, a neuroscientist who conducts similar research at McMaster University, but did not participate in the new work. “[It’s] starting to answer the mechanistic questions about how the microbiome influences the brain in a way that we can now build on.”
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