Title | Insulin signaling and dietary restriction differentially influence the decline of learning and memory with age. |
Publication Type | Journal Article |
Year of Publication | 2010 |
Authors | Kauffman, AL, Ashraf, JM, M Corces-Zimmerman, R, Landis, JN, Murphy, CT |
Journal | PLoS Biol |
Volume | 8 |
Issue | 5 |
Pagination | e1000372 |
Date Published | 2010 May |
Keywords | Aging, Animal Feed, Animals, Association Learning, Behavior, Animal, Caenorhabditis elegans, Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins, Chemotaxis, Cyclic AMP Response Element-Binding Protein, Humans, Insulin, Insulin-Like Growth Factor I, Learning, Memory, Mutation, Receptor, Insulin, Receptors, Nicotinic, Signal Transduction |
Abstract | Of all the age-related declines, memory loss is one of the most devastating. While conditions that increase longevity have been identified, the effects of these longevity-promoting factors on learning and memory are unknown. Here we show that the C. elegans Insulin/IGF-1 receptor mutant daf-2 improves memory performance early in adulthood and maintains learning ability better with age but, surprisingly, demonstrates no extension in long-term memory with age. By contrast, eat-2 mutants, a model of Dietary Restriction (DR), exhibit impaired long-term memory in young adulthood but maintain this level of memory longer with age. We find that crh-1, the C. elegans homolog of the CREB transcription factor, is required for long-term associative memory, but not for learning or short-term memory. The expression of crh-1 declines with age and differs in the longevity mutants, and CREB expression and activity correlate with memory performance. Our results suggest that specific longevity treatments have acute and long-term effects on cognitive functions that decline with age through their regulation of rate-limiting genes required for learning and memory. |
Alternate Journal | PLoS Biol. |