5/7/2014 – Infusion of young blood recharges brains of old mice, study finds

In a study, published online May 4 in Nature Medicine, researchers used sophisticated techniques to pin down numerous important molecular, neuroanatomical and neurophysiological changes in the brains of old mice that shared the blood of young mice.

But they also conducted a critical experiment that was far from sophisticated, said Tony Wyss-Coray, PhD, the senior author of the study and a professor of neurology and neurological sciences. The scientists simply compared older mice’s performance on standard laboratory tests of spatial memory after these mice had received infusions of plasma (the cell-free part of blood) from young versus old mice, or no plasma at all.

Tony Wyss-Coray is a faculty affiliate of the Center of Longevity.

Read the full article at Stanford School of Medicine.