Brain Drain

Could the fountain of youth actually be in our brains?

This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.

We all yearn for the glory days of our youth. Sadly, time and age only go one way. But what if there was a cure to kick those grays and wipe out those wrinkles?

Dongsheng Cai and his team at Albert Einstein College of Medicine may have found it! They looked at special stem cells in the brains of mice. These cells exist in a part of the brain that’s thought to control aging.

Cai wondered if the quantity of these cells could affect aging. He used a toxin to reduce the amount of these cells in mice by seventy percent. Result? It shifted the rate of aging to full throttle! These mice showed much poorer cognitive skills, lowered endurance levels and shorter lifespans. Injecting other, luckier mice with MORE of these cells increased their lifespan by fifteen percent! How’s that for a youth serum?

The researchers are studying ways to implant these same types of youth-boosting cells in humans.

Goodbye age before beauty, hello beauty before age!