Chronic Ampakine Treatments Stimulate Dendritic Growth and Promote Learning in Middle-Aged Rats.
Julie C LauterbornLinda C PalmerYousheng JiaDanielle T PhamBowen HouWeisheng WangBrian H TrieuConor D CoxSvetlana KantorovichChristine M GallGary LynchPublished in: The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience (2016)
Brain aging is characterized by a progressive loss of dendritic arbors and the emergence of impairments to learning-related synaptic plasticity. The present studies show that dendritic losses are evident by middle age despite housing in an enriched environment and can be mostly reversed by long-term, oral administration of a positive allosteric modulator of AMPA-type glutamate receptors. Dendritic recovery was accompanied by improvements to both synaptic plasticity and the encoding of long-term memory of a novel, complex environment. Because the short half-life compound had no evident negative effects, the results suggest a plausible strategy for treating age-related neuronal deterioration.