Science / Medicine : Fountain of Youth for Brains

A drug approved for some stroke patients may also reinvigorate sluggish, aging brains with the quick-witted learning ability of youth, a group of Chicago researchers reports.

In tests on groups of young and middle-aged rabbits at Northwestern University Medical School, researchers said in the journal Science that a drug called nimodipine is able to correct age-related mental slowness so that the older rabbits can learn as well as the younger ones.

“They (older rabbits receiving the drug) actually learned at the same rate, if not slightly faster than the young rabbits,” said John F. Disterhoft, an associate professor of cell biology at Northwestern, who directed the study.

“Two-thirds of the control group (older rabbits not receiving the drug) never did learn the task.”