From USC
Learning and memory functions in the brain may be boosted in new ways with treatments that will avoid the heightened cancer-causing risks of a substance that long was the believed choice actor in those areas: estrogen. With a new understanding of how that hormone works in the brain, however, researchers say future efforts may bypass estrogen in favor of calpain, a protein that works in tandem and gets triggered by estrogen. Earlier studies had shown how key calpain is to learning and memory. But scientists had focused on estrogen and its role, which, among its side-effects included higher cancer risks. Trojan researchers reexamined estrogen's function in the brain and saw for the first time that it did not act like a hormone, as it does in the rest of the body, but as a neurotransmitter or "synaptic modulator." Other means may be found to trigger calpain without the risks of estrogen -- meaning there could be new, improved treatments for Alzheimer's and other neuro-degenerative diseases, researchers say.
Hormone acts as neurotransmitter, triggers protein linked to learning, memory
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