Are bees able to rejuvenate their brains?
A team of scientists from Arizona State University and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences discovered that bees are able to reverse the effects of aging on their brains.
Their study, published in the scientific journal Experimental Gerontology, shows that when aging bees return to the nest to perform social tasks, such as taking care of larvae, .
Led by Associate Professor in ASU鈥檚 School of Life Science, Gro Amdam, the study鈥檚 goal was to find out why bees age when they leave the nest to look for food.
鈥淲e knew from previous research that when bees stay in the nest and take care of larvae 鈥� the bee babies 鈥� for as long as we observe them,鈥� Amdam said in a press release.
鈥淗owever, after a period of nursing, bees fly out gathering food and begin aging very quickly. After just two weeks, foraging bees have worn wings, hairless bodies, and more importantly, lose brain function 鈥� basically measured as the ability to learn new things. We wanted to find out if there was plasticity in this aging pattern so we asked the question, 鈥榃hat would happen if we asked the foraging bees to take care of larval babies again?鈥�
According to ASU, 10 days after returning to the nest, about half of the older foraging bees caring for the larvae had significantly improved their ability to learn new things.
While some of the older bees returned to searching for food, the team compared each group鈥檚 brains and saw a change in proteins. ASU reports that the scientists found a protein that apparently helps protect against dementia, along with a second "chaperone" protein that protects other proteins from being damaged.
