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Mice Brainpower Boosted With Alteration of a Single Gene

Slashdot: Science - Fetched: August 18th, 2015, 6:00pm UTC

Zothecula writes: By altering a single gene to inhibit the activity of an enzyme called phosphodiesterase (PDE4B), researchers have given mice the opportunity to see what an increase in intelligence is like. "They tended to learn faster, remember events longer and solve complex exercises better than ordinary mice. For example, the ldquo;brainy micerdquo; showed a better ability than ordinary mice to recognize another mouse that they had been introduced to the day before (abstract). They were also quicker at learning the location of a hidden escape platform in a test called the Morris water maze. However, the PDE4B-inhibited mice also showed less recall of a fearful event after several days than ordinary mice." While many people would welcome such a treatment, the scientists say their research could lead to new treatments for those with cognitive disorders and age-related cognitive decline.pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Mice+Brainpower+Boosted+With+Alteration+of+a+Single+Gene%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F1WCUJM1"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fscience.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F15%2F08%2F18%2F219236%2Fmice-brainpower-boosted-with-alteration-of-a-single-gene%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a a class="nobg" href="http://plus.google.com/share?url=http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/08/18/219236/mice-brainpower-boosted-with-alteration-of-a-single-gene?utm_source=slashdotamp;utm_medium=googleplus" onclick="javascript:window.open(this.href,'', 'menubar=no,toolbar=no,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes,height=600,width=600');return false;"img src="http://www.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-16.png" alt="Share on Google+"//a /div/ppa href="http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/08/18/219236/mice-brainpower-boosted-with-alteration-of-a-single-gene?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~4/kxFpyToR0a4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

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