Synapses are the junctions between nerve cells, and their action is central to learning and memory.
Samples taken from regions of the brain important in learning and memory were tested.
Synapses once relied on for learning and memory produce less of the chemical neuromodulators used to ferry cognitive messages.
Moreover, the particular protein that the flies lack is most concentrated in brain areas involved in learning and memory.
Neurophysiologists have recently discovered that Nitric Oxide (NO) plays a vital role in many brain functions, including learning and memory.
They also saw enhanced learning and memory skills in these patients and in a group of people with Alzheimer's disease that they tested.
Exactly why such stimulation works isn't known, experts say, but a similar procedure has been shown in animal studies to help improve learning and memory.
Access to stimulating activities appeared to block the harmful effects of oligomers on the cellular mechanisms underlying learning and memory, called long-term potentiation (LTP), researchers said.
Researchers at Stanford University and MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory had activated light-sensitive neurons in the brain's hippocampus involved in the memory of fright.
WSJ: Scientists Cast Light Onto Roots of Illness Deep in the Brain
One of the key culprits in the cascade is a chemical messenger called glutamate, which normally plays a crucial role in learning and memory by stimulating nerve cells to fire.
They also showed that injecting normal mice with extra ghrelin increased the number of synapses in the hippocampus - and improved the animals' performance in several learning and memory tests.
She added that while most treatments for Alzheimer's targeted the disease's early stages, this research showed that even after major brain damage it was still possible to improve learning and memory.
The researchers say it might be possible to use the hormone to develop new drugs to combat impaired learning and memory, but warn that weight gain could be a side effect.
Though the receptors got their name through their association with nicotine, their primary function in the brain is to regulate the release of a variety of neurotransmitters, including acetylcholine, which aids learning and memory.
Professor Seth Grant, an expert in the molecular mechanism of learning and memory at Edinburgh University, told BBC News Online that PKM was a particular version of an enzyme called protein kinase C (PKC) that had long been implicated in learning.
Imaging studies on depressed humans show shrinkage in their hippocampus, a brain region involved in learning, memory and emotion that is also a region where much neurogenesis occurs.
The data was then processed and showed people with schizophrenia had fewer successful "dockings" in the left hippocampus area in the brain - an area known to be involved in learning, perception and memory - than healthy people.
Hawkins, who will continue to work as chief technical officer of Treo maker palmOne (nasdaq: PLMO - news - people ), already has his own research lab to study the neocortex, a massive part of the brain thought to hold such higher level functions as language, learning, memory and complex thought.
This is done by examining the combined concentration of gray and white matter, or nerve cells and fiber tracts, in parts of the brain not normally used for verbal processing the hippocampus and cerebellum, normally associated with memory and motor learning.
Targacept's pill is more refined, he says, because it binds with a subtype of neuronal nicotinic receptor situated mostly in parts of the brain that process sensory information and aid in learning and short-term memory.
Babies of women exposed to the chemicals may suffer impaired memory and learning ability.
These also improved memory and learning, similar to improvements made by environmental stimulation.
Students in the other group spent that time reading an article about how memory works and learning new strategies for recalling material.
The jet-lagged hamsters showed a drastic drop in neuron production in the hippocampus area of the brain, which closely contributes to memory processing and learning.
These drugs may help in childhood learning disability, in the memory loss with ageing and even in recovery from brain damage.
Gum has been studied for its beneficial effects on memory, alertness, anxiety reduction, appetite suppression, mood and learning.
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