A team of scientists from Emory University has shown thatturning off a gene allows mice to become “smarter”, by improving their ability to remember objects they had already explored and to move in mazes more quickly than those mice with the activated gene. Details have been published in the magazineProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The gene is calledRGS14, although it has been dubbed as“gen Homer Simpson”referring to the famous cartoon character, and it is also present in humans. It’s foundmost active in the CA2 region of the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible forconsolidate learning and memory. John Hepler and his colleagues found in their experiments that, with the disabled gene, the CA2 region producedstronger neural connections(long-term potentiation) in the face of electrical stimuli. This translated into an increased ability of the mice to recognize various objects, as well as a visible improvement in their ability to navigate within the mazes.
“The big question that arises is why we or mice have a gene in the brain that makes us less intelligent, a ‘Homer Simpson’ gene,” says Hepler, who assures that we must continue to study this area of the brain to understand how exactly memory and learning are regulated. In addition to finding out if the alteration of this gene will cause in us an effect similar to that produced in rodents. “It would be great to find a compound that would inhibit RGS14 and make us smarter,” admits Hepler.
