Mice subjected to brain damage were able to form new memories with the help of stem cell therapy.

New UC Irvine research is among the first to demonstrate that neural stem cells may help to restore memory after brain damage.

In the study, mice with brain injuries experienced enhanced memory – similar to the level found in healthy mice – up to three months after receiving a stem cell treatment. Scientists believe the stem cells secreted proteins called neurotrophins that protected vulnerable cells from death and rescued memory. This creates hope that a drug to boost production of these proteins could be developed to restore the ability to remember in patients with neuronal loss.

Youthful stem cell therapy to replace aged stem cell reservoirs in the brain will be one of the methods for slowing and eventually reversing brain aging. Success in mice is a good sign for future stem cell therapies for human brains.

Mice with damage to the hippocampus who were given stem cells formed new memories just as well as undamaged mice did.

Three months after implanting the stem cells, the mice were tested on place recognition. The researchers found that mice with brain injuries that also received stem cells remembered their surroundings about 70 percent of the time – the same level as healthy mice. In contrast, control mice that didn’t receive stem cells still had memory impairments.