Learning Plasticity Can be Boosted by the Application of a M

[JaneJone]

A recent study showed that experience-dependant plasticity can be enhanced by making the neuron connection stronger. And at present a molecule compound was found effective to make the connections more active, which is of great significance in facilitating the treatment of Alzheimer and related diseases.

Scientists found the new theory on mice by observing the synapses changes. During the process, they discovered the key element for the improvement, N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDAR), playing a boosting role among the communications of neurons. By activating the receptor, a better performance of learning was showed and d-cycloserine was found capable of taking the responsibility.

Animal tests for probing the d-cycloserine’s function on strengthening the activity of NMDAR presented positive results. Scientists achieved that by monitoring the electrical signal with assistance of electrodes working on brain tissue slices.

Because of technique limitation, the experiment didn’t carry out on humans until recent years. A new tech electroencephalography, abbreviated as EEG, was involved in the study on humans after taking a certain dose of d-cycloserine. They checked the effect of the compound mainly by three types of action performance requiring cognitive analysis that are weather prediction task, information integration task and an n-back task. All of these tasks need practice or memory related brain activities.

People participated in the tasks are all adults with no deficits in brain function. They were divided into two groups; one group took d-cycloserine and the other group took same amount of placebo. Then the mentioned three cognitive tasks were carried out by them. The result showed that people who took d-cycloserine finished weather prediction and information integration tasks with better performance in general and related data also showed positive difference in the process. But no distinction appeared in the n-back task.

The experiments on human furtherly proofed the feasibility of the theory that by enhancing the activities of NMDAR can lead to an improvement in cognitive brain activity. This new finding may be applied into the treatment of brain diseases including Alzheimer to improve the condition of low learning ability.

About Author
Ada Brown is a staff writer of BOC Sciences, a company providing chemicals and related custom services. He mainly focuses on the writing of natural compounds’ new function and some advancement in drug design. D-cycloserine is one of such natural compound that can improve brain activity.

BOC Sciences, a researcher chemical supply, provides various chemicals including inhibitors, APIs, GMP and many other building blocks like tinuvin 1130, among which the molecule compound d-cycloserine was available. Along with these chemicals, BOC Sciences also offers custom services like synthesis, drug discovery, protein crystallization and etc. With more than a decade experience in the field, BOC Sciences is capable of supplying goods and services at best quality.