If you want your brain to be young again, you can inject young cerebrospinal fluid?

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As we all know, the brain is a very delicate tissue, and it does not easily enter the water. But in fact, there is a certain kind of liquid in the brain. This liquid is colorless, transparent, and the texture is like plasma. It fills the brain and spinal cord. This is what is called "cerebrospinal fluid" in modern medicine. The cerebrospinal fluid contains nutrients and various ions required for the activities of the brain and spinal cord, which can help the brain and spinal cord to function normally .

The journal Science published a study in 2013 and 2019. The study showed that when people fall asleep at night, the cerebrospinal fluid that is usually around the brain tissue will enter the brain tissue through small channels, like a "cleanser". The same is constantly flowing through, bringing out the garbage and toxins accumulated during the day. It can be said that cerebrospinal fluid is one of the biomarkers that reflect the health of the brain and diseases of the nervous system .

Not only that, but now, a new study has found that young and healthy cerebrospinal fluid may be the key to improving memory in older mice.

In fact, cerebrospinal fluid also develops and ages along with the brain tissue. In early development, the signaling molecules carried in the cerebrospinal fluid can promote the proliferation and differentiation of neural progenitor cells. As people age, cerebrospinal fluid changes, most notably including increased inflammatory proteins and decreased growth factors.

Based on this, researchers from Stanford University Neuroscience proposed the idea of ​​replacing the aging cerebrospinal fluid with young cerebrospinal fluid, trying to understand the possibility of young cerebrospinal fluid improving the memory function of the aging brain .

In the new study, the donors of cerebrospinal fluid were 10-week-old mice that had just reached adulthood, and the recipients were 20-month-old mice that had entered middle-aged and old age.

The researchers obtained about 90 microliters of cerebrospinal fluid from the brains of young mice, from which immune cells had been removed, and injected them into the brains of older mice at a rate of 0.5 microliters per hour over a period of seven days. middle. A total of 8 aged mice underwent this process, termed the YM-CSF group. However, the cerebrospinal fluid of the old mice was not completely replaced by the cerebrospinal fluid of the young mice. As a control, they also injected 9 aged mice with artificial cerebrospinal fluid (aCSF group).

Before conducting the above experiments, the research team had already trained these old mice: They applied electric shocks to the feet of the mice, and made flashes and sounds at the same time. In this way, the mice developed a special memory: when the same flashes and sounds were repeated, even without the shock, the mice froze in fear of recalling the pain of the shock.

A few weeks after the young cerebrospinal fluid was implanted, the research team tested how many mice still retained the memory. As a result, 40 percent of the old mice implanted with young cerebrospinal fluid remained motionless when flashes of light and sounds appeared, while only 18 percent of the control group that received artificial cerebrospinal fluid retained the memory. This means that young cerebrospinal fluid does make older mice better at learning and long-term memory.

Not only that, but in their search for the specific cells and signaling molecules of this process, the researchers also targeted a fibroblast growth factor called Fgf17 when they injected the protein into the cerebrospinal fluid of aged mice, even without the Younger cerebrospinal fluid, these mice also had improved memory; conversely, when the young mice were injected with the Fgf17 antibody, the youngsters' memory also declined.

Of course, this requires a lot of follow-up research. This research opens up a whole new field, and in the future, reversing brain aging may also become a reality.