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Running enables the brain to make more neurons in its hippocampus, where learning and memory are rooted, but it took an experiment by scientists at the University of Queensland’s Brain Institute to explain why.
The researchers analyzed the blood of mice that used a running wheel on and off over four days and compared the results to that of blood from mice with no wheels.
They found the freewheeling mice had 38 proteins that had increased in their blood levels compared to their idle siblings.
One in particular stood out: selenoprotein, which carries the mineral selenium to the brain, had more than doubled in the active mice.
Next, the team added forms of selenium to a lab dish dotted with neuron precursor cells. Two weeks later, the number of precursor cells had doubled.
When the scientists injected selenium selenite, a salt, directly into mice’s brains daily for seven days, the number of precursor cells in their hippocampus region tripled.
To see if selenium might reverse aging’s drag on the brain, the group added a different form of selenium to the drinking water of 18-month-old mice, roughly equivalent to 60-year-old humans.
After a month, the mice had doubled the number of new neurons in their hippocampus areas and performed better on memory tests than old mice whose water hadn’t been dosed.
To see if selenium also could reverse damage from a stroke or other traumatic brain injury, the researchers induced a stroke-like lesion in some mice’s brains that destroyed some memories.
Treated with selenium, those mice regained their memories and later performed as well on memory tests as their normal siblings. Damaged but untreated mice were unable to regain what they’d lost.
The study team emphasized that there’s no way to know whether selenium would have the same effect on human brains or, if it does, how much selenium would be needed in a diet or supplements to achieve the result.
TRENDPOST: The Australian work points research in the new direction of simple, non-pharmaceutical treatment of brain deficiencies, possibly including Alzheimer’s Disease.
More broadly, this is another step away from synthetic chemicals as the first resort in medical treatment, showing again that nature, not drug factories, often can supply effective and less dangerous treatments for human ailments.