Notes

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there are two major forms of learning
implicit explicit or declarative or
non-declarative the simple form of
learning which I studied in a pleasure
which holds true for all invertebrate
animals is the learning of perceptual
and motor skills more complex learning
that involves the hippocampus is
requires conscious participation and
involves learning about you know people
places and objects so two different
systems implicit learning which does not
involve conscious participation involves
a number of systems in the brain in the
simplest cases just reflex pathways
themselves but in other cases you could
involve the amygdala for emotional
learning the basal ganglia for some
motor tasks so these are a variety of
systems but they per campuses not in any
fundamental way involved in the learning
of people places an object it involves
conscious participation and it involves
the hippocampus hippocampus is not
critical throughout the lifetime of the
memory but it's critical for the initial
strong and consolidation of the memory
so these are two very fundamental
systems mammals have both in vertebrate
animals only have one lifelong learning
is extremely important than the more we
learn about lifespan the more important
we realize it is first of all it's
pleasurable most people after a while
realize when they acquire new knowledge
about something that it's really quite
an enjoyable experience but also it's
like doing exercise in fact its exercise
of the brain it's good for you so as
people age they're susceptible to one of
two kinds of cognitive decline
what is Alzheimer's disease which begins
in the 70s
but becomes almost an epidemic when
people are in their nineties when almost
half the population has Alzheimer's
disease in the other which was only
recently appreciated to be quite
distinct from Alzheimer's disease
it's called age-related memory loss
that differs from Alzheimer's disease in
the sense that it starts early starts in
midlife involves a different part of the
brain it starts in the dentate gyrus
while summers disease starts in the
n-terminal cortex and it is prevented
you can be you can prevent it and also
to some degree you might be able to
reverse it the things that prevent it
the things that are prophylactically
useful for it are social involvement
cognitive involvement learning new
skills learning a foreign language
physical exercise a good diet and good
health making sure if your blood
pressure goes up that it's controlled
that if you have diabetes that's
controlled etc etc etc those things
active portent lis to reduce the
likelihood and in the limits essentially
eliminate age-related memory loss so at
least significantly restricted and what
recently emerged as a result of a
colleague of mine at Columbia Jerrod
kiseki is that there is a new approach
to this kid psyche found that your bones
are an endocrine gland they release a
hormone called osteocalcin and as your
calcine acts on the testes and the
ovaries on the liver accent many organs
of the body but it also acts on the
brain and acts on the brain to enhance
memory storage there's other things as
well but it enhances memory storage and
it enhances the memory storage in young
people but also enhances memory storage
in old people and one of the reasons
that exercise is important is because
exercise builds up bone mass this isn't
particularly important in women where
bone mass density
crease more dramatically than the men
but it's important for everybody so when
you exercise you increase your bone mass
you increase osteocalcin and you improve
age related memory loss so recently
kosecki has done a very interesting
experiment it's been known for some time
that if you take an old mouse that has
age-related memory loss etc etc etc mice
never get Alzheimer's disease they only
get age-related memory loss I found that
it was one of the only clues that made
me think it might be different from
Alzheimer's disease because you can have
pure age-related memory loss without
having Alzheimer's disease if you take
an old mouse which has age related
memory loss and cross profuse it with
the young mouse that doesn't let us take
the blood out of it and give it the
blood of a young animal you rescue eight
related memory loss gerard kosecki has
found that one of the critical factors
in young blood is osteocalcin so it fits
in with India that exercise you know it
which builds upon mass releases
osteocalcin has this rejuvenating effect
on the brain also together with Scotts
more we analyze some of the genetic
changes that involved in age-related
memory loss and we show that involves a
cascade that's involved in converting
short-term memory to long-term memory in
earlier work I'd shown that when you
convert short-term memory to long-term
memory and almost all systems involves a
particular alteration in gene expression
a gene called creb cyclic AMP- responsive
element binding protein is
activated and it acts not by itself but
together with two other components the
creb binding protein and the protein
called RBA b48 and scott small and I
found that RBA before it is dramatically
decreased in age-related memory loss and
if you restore it you can take and make
an old Mouse young if you knock it out
you can take a young Mouse and make it
old so clearly we had very good evidence
that
identified at least part of a molecular
cascade that's important for age-related
memory loss and then we tested miso
osteocalcin accent several places in the
brain but it also acts on this critical
switch it facilitates the working of
this switch
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